Chương 4
“No.”
“You didn’t read it.”
“It doesn’t matter what it says. He had no right to hit you.”
“What if it was mean?”
“Was it mean?”
Lily shook her head.
“Then no.”
“What if he thought it was?”
“No.”
Lily lifted her hand.
The cream card opened.
Inside was a drawing of three people standing beneath a square yellow sun. Claire recognized Lily in the silver dress and Marcus in his burgundy shirt. The third figure wore black and had dark hair shaped like a bun.
Above them, Lily had written in uneven blue letters:
I WISH YOU WOULD COME WHEN YOU SAY. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD. I STILL LOVE YOU.
Claire read it twice.
The room blurred.
“He said it embarrassed him,” Lily whispered.
“Did he say that before he hit you?”
“He said, ‘Your mother put you up to this.’ I said you didn’t. Then he said not to lie.”
Claire touched the edge of the card.
“He thought I was lying.”
“You weren’t.”
“He doesn’t like when people look at him.”
Claire remembered the guests turning toward Lily when she approached Marcus. The hired photographer had followed her with his lens. Celia had smiled from across the room, pleased with the family image arranging itself without instruction.
Marcus had opened the card and seen a child’s accusation written in blue crayon.
“He was wrong,” Claire said.
“About which part?”
“All of it.”
Lily stared at the drawing. “I don’t still love him now.”
“You don’t have to decide that tonight.”
“I decided.”
“You can change your mind later.”
“Will that make you mad?”
“No.”
“What if I don’t change it?”
“No.”
Lily leaned against her.
Claire held her until the oven clock changed from 10:41 to 10:58. Neither of them spoke. The kitchen drawer beside the sink remained half open, showing the handles of two wooden spoons and a roll of aluminum foil.
At eleven, Claire helped Lily brush her teeth. She checked her pupils with the bathroom light, though she knew almost nothing about what she was looking for. Lily complained that the light was too bright. Claire apologized and turned it off.
Lily asked to sleep in Claire’s bed.
They lay beneath the white cotton blanket with the card on the nightstand. Claire left the hallway light on and listened to her daughter breathe.
At 1:16 a.m., Lily said into the dark, “Mom?”
“Yes.”
“Did you like hitting him?”
Claire could have lied.
The question seemed too large for the child who had asked it, but Lily waited with the stubborn patience she used when tying her shoes.
“For one second,” Claire said, “yes.”
Lily rolled onto her side.
“Then I hated that I did it.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to learn that hurting someone is how we prove we’re strong.”
“Did he think that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You always say you know him.”
“I used to think I did.”
Lily was quiet for so long that Claire thought she had fallen asleep.
Then she said, “I liked it too.”
Claire looked toward the ceiling.
“I know,” she whispered.
By morning, the first video had been viewed more than four hundred thousand times.
It was twelve seconds long. It began after Marcus struck Lily. In the clip, Claire entered the frame, pulled Lily into her arms, stood, confronted Marcus, and slapped him. The person recording had been too far away to capture the words clearly. The image shook as guests moved.
Without the first strike, the video looked like a woman in an evening dress attacking a man who had been standing near a child.
A second clip appeared shortly after seven. This one showed Lily offering the card, but Marcus’s body blocked the actual impact. Viewers could hear the slap and see the card fall.
The two clips spread separately.
Half the comments called Marcus a monster. The other half called Claire unstable. Strangers slowed the video, enlarged Lily’s face, speculated about her injuries, identified her school from an old photograph on Celia’s public charity page, and argued over whether the child had been coached.
Claire stopped reading after someone wrote that Lily’s silence proved she was used to being hit.
She called the school.
The principal already knew.
“We can keep her home without marking the absence unexcused,” Mrs. Wallace said. “We’ve also asked staff not to discuss the video.”
“Has anyone contacted you?”
“Two reporters called the main office. We gave no information.”
Claire gripped the phone. “How did they know where she goes?”
“I don’t know.”
Claire did.
The Reed Family Foundation had donated to the school’s arts program the previous year. Photographs from the presentation ceremony remained online. Marcus had missed the ceremony, but Celia attended with Lily and posed beneath the school sign.
“I’ll keep her home today,” Claire said.
“Of course.”
“And maybe tomorrow.”
“Take the time you need.”
Time was not the thing Claire needed. She needed the internet to forget a child it had discovered overnight.
After the call, she found Lily sitting on the living room floor in yesterday’s white socks, building a crooked wall from wooden blocks.
“Can I go to school?”
“Not today.”
“Because Dad hit me?”
“Because too many people are talking about what happened.”
“Will they stop?”
“Yes.”
It was another lie, though Claire hoped it would become true if enough days passed.
Lily placed a red block on top of a blue one. “Can Hannah come here?”
“I’ll ask her mother.”
“Don’t tell her.”
“She may already know.”
Lily knocked the wall over with one finger.
Claire’s attorney called at eight thirty.
Mara Levin had handled the final months of the divorce and had once described Marcus as a man who treated every boundary like the opening offer in a negotiation. She did not waste time on greetings.
“Do not speak to the press, the Reed family’s lawyers, the company, or Marcus.”
“I spoke to Evelyn.”
“Stop doing that.”
“She’s my friend.”
May you like
“She’s his sister.”
“She was my friend first.”
