Chương 2
“Absolutely,” I said.
I walked to the doorway.
“Lily, get your shoes.”
“Are we going somewhere?”
“Yes.”
Emma didn't ask.
She followed me.
Mark frowned.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.”
“Rachel.”
I picked up my purse from the console table.
The divorce petition inside it had been printed three days earlier.
It was not there because of Diane.
That distinction mattered.
For nearly eight months, I had been meeting quietly with an attorney named Natalie Cho during lunch breaks and on two occasions while Mark believed I was at the dentist.
I had not filed.
I had not even decided with certainty that I would.
I kept waiting for something in our marriage to become unmistakable.
That sounds foolish now.
At the time, it felt responsible.
Twelve years is a long time to dismantle because your husband has learned to make you lonely while sitting three feet away.
Mark followed me into the hall.
“Don't walk out in the middle of her party.”
I looked past him toward Emma.
Her birthday sash was crooked.
One end had fallen loose from her shoulder.
“Her party?”
He followed my gaze and seemed to hear his own words.
For once, I did not rescue him from them.
“Come on, girls.”
Diane appeared behind Mark.
“Oh, for God's sake, Rachel.”
I opened the front door.
“You don't need to put on a performance.”
I turned back.
Diane had one hand planted on her hip.
Mark looked angry now.
Richard had finally raised his head.
Claire stood behind them holding her glass with both hands.
I said, “I'm not performing.”
Then I left.
The girls climbed into my Honda while I stood beside the driver's door trying to decide where a mother takes two children after their grandmother destroys a birthday cake because neither child was born male.
Emma solved it for me.
“Can we go to Dairy Queen?”
Lily immediately said, “Yes.”
I looked at Emma.
Her cheeks were blotchy.
She was trying to smile.
“Dairy Queen it is.”
Halfway there, Lily announced that Grandma was “a psycho,” a word she had clearly acquired from somewhere I did not intend to investigate that evening.
“Don't call people that,” I said.
“Even if they smash cakes?”
“Even then.”
“What can I call her?”
Emma laughed.
It escaped before she could stop it.
Lily turned around in her seat, pleased with herself.
I laughed too.
It felt terrible and wonderful.
At a red light, my phone began vibrating in the cup holder.
MARK appeared on the screen.
Then again.
Then again.
I turned the phone facedown.
Dairy Queen was crowded with families and two teenage boys wearing baseball uniforms.
We ordered Blizzards, fries, and a small chocolate cake from the refrigerated display because Emma insisted she didn't need another big one.
The employee behind the counter found a candle in a supply drawer.
It was shaped like a seven.
“We can pretend it's upside down,” Lily said.
“That doesn't make ten,” Emma told her.
“It makes something.”
We sat in a booth beside the window.
Emma ate three fries before touching her ice cream.
Then she asked the question I had been dreading.
“Does Dad wish I was a boy?”
I folded a napkin into smaller and smaller squares.
Across the restaurant, somebody's toddler was screaming because his father had taken away a plastic spoon.
“I don't know what your dad wishes,” I said.
It was the first truthful answer that came to me.
Emma stared at her Blizzard.
“Grandma does.”
“Yes.”
“Does she hate me?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Emma noticed.
Ten-year-olds notice more than adults give them credit for.
I tried again.
“Your grandmother has beliefs that are cruel, and she acted cruelly toward you.”
“That's not what I asked.”
“No.”
She looked up.
“I don't think she hates you.”
“Then why would she do that?”
Because Diane had spent decades confusing lineage with love.
Because Richard had spent decades rewarding her worst behavior with silence.
Because Mark had been raised to treat his mother's approval as weather, something everybody else had to dress around.
None of that belonged on Emma's shoulders.
“Some adults can love someone and still hurt them because they care more about being right than being kind.”
Emma considered this.
“That sounds stupid.”
“It is.”
Lily dipped a french fry into chocolate ice cream.
“Can I still hate her?”
“No.”
“For tonight?”
I almost smiled.
“You can be angry.”
“I'm extremely angry.”
“That I believe.”
Emma finally took a bite of her ice cream.
My phone vibrated again.
This time it was Claire.
I let it ring.
Five minutes later, a text appeared.
I know today was awful.
Mom has completely lost it.
Please call me when you can.
I read it twice.
The phrasing bothered me.
Mom has completely lost it made what happened sound like an isolated explosion.
It wasn't.
Diane had simply stopped disguising something she had been saying for years.
Another message arrived from Mark.
Stop punishing everyone and come home.
I stared at those words until the screen dimmed.
Not Are the girls okay.
Not Tell Emma I'm sorry.
Not I shouldn't have said that.
Come home.
I slipped the phone into my purse.
Emma saw me do it.
“Is Dad mad?”
“Yes.”
“At us?”
“At me.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm not doing what he wants.”
She nodded as if this made perfect sense.
That hurt more than I expected.
After we finished eating, I bought the girls toothbrushes at a pharmacy across the parking lot.
Lily wanted the purple one.
Emma chose blue.
Neither asked why we needed toothbrushes.
At 7:42, I drove to the Lakeside Hotel six miles from our house and booked a room with two queen beds.
The clerk asked whether we were visiting family.
“No,” I said.
Then I nearly laughed at the answer.
In the elevator, Emma leaned against my arm.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Are we going home tomorrow?”
May you like
The doors opened on the fourth floor.
I looked at my daughters reflected in the scratched brass panel.
