Chương 3
“Why did you send the money to an account with your mother?”
“It’s not her account.”
“I know the last four digits.”
“She’s on it because she helped me open it years ago.”
“So why?”
Another pause.
“My mom said we needed to protect ourselves.”
“From me.”
“From you taking Lily and disappearing.”
I closed my eyes.
“You transferred the money before dinner.”
“Yes.”
“Before your mother hit her.”
“Mara, stop acting like that was some kind of beating.”
My eyes opened.
“That’s what you have to say?”
“I’m saying you’re making one awful moment into something bigger.”
“One awful moment?”
“My mother shouldn’t have touched her.”
Touched.
He had already found a softer word.
“But you attacked two people.”
“I hit you.”
“And shoved a sixty-year-old woman.”
“After she slapped our child and called her defective.”
“She was angry.”
“So was I.”
“That doesn’t make what you did okay.”
The strange thing was that he wasn’t entirely wrong.
I had hit him.
Not pushed him away from Lily.
Not restrained him.
Hit him.
The memory of my palm connecting with his face made my stomach turn now that the adrenaline was gone.
I had wanted to hurt him for those few seconds.
That fact belonged to me whether he deserved my anger or not.
“I’ll deal with what I did,” I said.
“You need to deal with what you did.”
“What exactly did I do?”
“You watched.”
He became quiet.
Then, very softly, he said, “Come home.”
“No.”
“We need to talk like adults.”
“We are talking.”
“Not over the phone.”
“I’m not bringing Lily back there.”
“My mother isn’t at the house.”
“Neither am I.”
He breathed through his nose.
I could picture him pinching the bridge of it, the way he did when a meeting ran too long.
“Mom thinks she should file a police report.”
“Then she should.”
That caught him.
“What?”
“If she thinks I assaulted her, she should report it.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“I do.”
“You could be arrested.”
“I know.”
“And then what happens to Lily?”
His voice changed on her name.
Not warmer.
Sharper.
Something underneath it made the back of my neck prickle.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean maybe think before you keep escalating this.”
There it was again.
Not here.
Protect ourselves.
Custody.
I looked at the dark hallway wall and heard Melissa’s message in my head.
“Did you already talk to a lawyer?”
Evan said nothing.
“Evan.”
“I’ve talked to someone.”
“When?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“After you started acting strange about money.”
I nearly laughed.
“My money?”
“Our family’s money.”
“My grandmother’s trust is not our family’s money.”
“So that’s what this is really about.”
“What?”
“You’ve always had one foot out the door because you knew you had that cushion.”
The accusation was so carefully shaped that for a second I wondered how long it had been rehearsed.
“You told your mother about the trust documents, didn’t you?”
“She’s my mother.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“She was trying to help.”
“With custody?”
“With everything.”
I leaned against the wall.
The apartment suddenly felt too warm.
“Did you tell her what happens to the trust if I die?”
His breath stopped for just a fraction of a second.
Then he said, “What the hell kind of question is that?”
“You asked me that three months ago.”
“I asked a normal estate-planning question.”
“We’ve never done estate planning.”
“That’s exactly why I asked.”
“Did you tell Diane?”
“You’re sounding paranoid.”
The word landed where he meant it to.
For years, whenever Diane pushed too far, Evan had called me sensitive.
When she criticized my job, I was defensive.
When she ignored our rules with Lily, I was controlling.
When I noticed the pattern, I was keeping score.
Now I was paranoid.
“I’m hanging up.”
“Mara, don’t.”
“I’m not discussing this anymore tonight.”
“If you keep my daughter from me, that’s going to matter.”
I went very still.
“My daughter?”
“Our daughter.”
“That isn’t what you said.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Yes.”
I ended the call.
My hand was numb around the phone.
Rachel was standing behind me.
I hadn’t heard her come out of the bedroom.
“How much did you hear?”
“Enough.”
She held out her hand.
“Give me the phone.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re about to call him back.”
“I am not.”
“You have the look.”
“What look?”
“The one from the Christmas party when you told my ex he had the moral depth of a parking ticket.”
“That was accurate.”
“It was.”
She kept her hand extended.
“And you still regretted it for three days.”
I gave her the phone.
She put it on top of the refrigerator.
“You can reach that.”
“I know.”
“But it requires intention.”
At twelve-thirty, we finally went to sleep.
Rachel took the couch despite my arguments.
I lay beside Lily listening to the unfamiliar pipes knock behind the wall.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Evan lower his gaze while our daughter looked at him for help.
At 3:17, Lily rolled toward me and murmured, “Daddy home?”
I pressed my face into her hair.
“No, sweetheart.”
She was already asleep again.
I remained awake until dawn.
At seven, I emailed Calvin that I had a family emergency and would not be in.
He replied six minutes later.
Take care of your kid.
No questions.
No complaint.
I stared at the message with ridiculous gratitude.
Rachel made coffee strong enough to strip paint and gave Lily cereal in a plastic mixing bowl because she did not own anything child-sized.
Lily found this hilarious.
For five minutes, she was simply two years old again.
She dropped a cereal loop onto the floor and announced, “Oopsie.”
Rachel looked down.
“Unacceptable.”
Lily giggled.
“Again.”
“No, please don’t interpret that as encouragement.”
Another cereal loop fell.
I laughed before I could stop myself.
Then my phone rang.
Unknown number.
May you like
I let it go to voicemail.
Thirty seconds later, a notification appeared.
