Chương 7
She slid it into her laptop bag instead.
When she opened the bedroom door, Sophie was sitting cross-legged on the mattress with the rabbit in her lap.
She had found an old sheet of printer paper and a blue pen.
A row of uneven rectangles covered the page.
“What are those?”
“Houses.”
Rachel sat beside her.
“All the same house?”
“No.”
Sophie pointed at one with an enormous crooked chimney.
“This is yours.”
“I have a chimney?”
“You do now.”
“And this?”
“Mine.”
Sophie tapped the smallest rectangle.
It had no windows.
Rachel waited.
“Does your house need windows?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Sophie drew another line around it.
Rachel watched without correcting anything.
After a while Sophie asked, “Did you talk to Daniel?”
“Yes.”
“Was he mad?”
“He was upset.”
“At me?”
“No.”
Sophie looked up to check.
“At Grandma Margaret?”
“Yes.”
The pen stopped moving.
“Is she still my grandma?”
Rachel inhaled slowly.
“She’s Daniel’s mom.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.”
Rachel almost smiled despite herself.
Sophie had inherited that particular intolerance for evasive answers from her.
“I don’t know what you’ll want to call her after today.”
“Can I call her Margaret?”
“You can.”
Sophie returned to the paper.
A few seconds later she said, “I don’t want to see her.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Ever?”
Rachel hesitated.
The word was too large.
She could feel how easily fear made adults promise permanent things to children because certainty sounded kind.
“For now, no.”
Sophie accepted that more readily than Rachel expected.
“Daniel wants to see you.”
The pen stopped again.
“Here?”
“Only if you want.”
“Is Margaret coming?”
“No.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
Sophie studied the pen cap.
“Can he come tomorrow?”
“Sure.”
“Not tonight.”
“Okay.”
Rachel texted Daniel.
Tomorrow.
She does not want a visit tonight.
He answered immediately.
Okay.
Tell her I love her.
Rachel read the message twice.
She did not pass it along.
Not yet.
She put the phone away and said, “We need food.”
Sophie looked toward the kitchen.
“Do you still have cereal?”
“Possibly from the last presidential administration.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means no.”
Sophie considered this, then held up the rabbit.
“Bunny wants noodles.”
“Bunny has terrible nutritional judgment.”
“He got hit too.”
Rachel’s expression changed before she could stop it.
Sophie saw.
“He didn’t get hit like me.”
“I know.”
“He just fell.”
“I know.”
Sophie looked down.
“I’m okay.”
Rachel sat very still.
Children said things like that when they were not sure what adults needed from them.
She had done it too.
Her own father used to ask whether she was okay in a tone that made no sound except yes feel permitted.
Rachel touched Sophie’s knee.
“You don’t have to be okay for me.”
Sophie frowned.
“I know.”
But the answer came too fast.
They ordered noodles from a place two blocks away.
Rachel chose pickup because she needed air and because Sophie did not want a stranger coming to the apartment door.
They walked together, Sophie holding Rachel’s hand with one hand and the rabbit with the other.
Outside, the evening had turned warm and sticky.
Traffic hissed over damp pavement from an earlier shower.
A bus groaned at the intersection.
Two teenagers argued over whose turn it was to carry a skateboard.
Nothing in the city knew that Rachel’s father might have been part of a fraud, that Margaret might have burned a house, or that Sophie’s cheek was still faintly red under the streetlights.
Rachel found that strangely comforting.
The world did not rearrange itself around private disaster.
People still wanted dinner.
Dogs still stopped to smell hydrants.
Someone upstairs was practicing the same three piano notes badly enough to qualify as a threat.
At the noodle shop, Sophie changed her mind twice and finally asked for plain buttered noodles.
Rachel ordered something spicy she knew she would regret.
While they waited, Sophie stood near the refrigerator case and looked at bottles of orange soda.
“Can I have one?”
“You hate orange soda.”
“I might like it now.”
“That is a bold developmental claim.”
Sophie looked at her.
“Is that a no?”
Rachel bought the soda.
Sophie took one sip outside and made a face.
“That’s bad.”
Rachel laughed before she could help it.
The sound surprised both of them.
Sophie handed her the bottle.
“I told you.”
“You absolutely did not.”
“I was thinking it.”
“That does not count as telling me.”
“It should.”
For half a block, things felt almost normal.
Then a black SUV slowed beside them.
Rachel’s body stiffened.
The vehicle continued past and turned into a parking garage.
Sophie noticed.
“Did you think that was Margaret?”
“No.”
It was a lie.
Sophie let it pass.
Back at the apartment, Rachel locked both deadbolts.
She set the food on the counter and checked the hall through the peephole before she caught herself.
Sophie had already started eating.
Her rabbit sat upright on an empty chair with one ear leaning farther than the other after Rachel’s repair.
Rachel took two bites before realizing she had no appetite.
Her phone buzzed.
Daniel.
I spoke to Mom.
Rachel stared at the message.
She opened it.
She says she did not know Thomas before the insurance claim and Claire invented the rest because she was unstable after her father died.
A second message arrived.
I did not tell her about storage.
Rachel typed, Did you ask where she is?
At a hotel near the airport.
Which one?
She won’t say.
Rachel put down her fork.
That was wrong.
Not proof.
Not even close.
But wrong.
Daniel sent another message.
She says she’ll call you directly tomorrow.
Rachel replied, She should not.
Then she blocked Margaret’s number.
Sophie twirled a noodle around her fork.
“Are you fighting?”
“Not right this second.”
“That means yes.”
Rachel took a drink of water.
“Yes.”
“With Daniel?”
“A little.”
Sophie chewed slowly.
“Are you getting divorced?”
May you like
Rachel nearly inhaled the water.
“No one has decided anything like that.”
