Chương 10
Daniel leaned forward.
“You knew it was wrong.”
“Yes.”
“And you did it to Lily anyway.”
Richard did not answer.
Daniel’s voice dropped.
“Why?”
Richard sat.
For the first time, he looked sixty-six.
Not powerful.
Not broken.
Simply older than he had been pretending to be.
“Because you were leaving me.”
Daniel blinked.
“What?”
“The hospital. The house. The company. Everything.”
“I was considering your offer.”
“You were going to say no.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“Yes, I did.”
“How?”
“Because you always look at the door when you’ve decided to disappoint me.”
Daniel stared at him.
Natalie looked at Daniel too.
It was absurdly specific.
It also sounded true.
Richard’s fingers flattened on the table.
“You did it when you told me you were going to medical school. When you said you were moving to Boston. When you told us you were marrying Natalie.”
Daniel’s face went rigid.
“And Lily?”
Richard swallowed.
“When you started calling her your daughter.”
Daniel did not move.
Richard looked down.
“I knew I had lost the argument.”
“What argument?”
“That you would come back.”
“So you punished her.”
“No.”
Daniel’s expression changed.
Richard corrected himself.
“Yes.”
Elaine looked at him.
The single word had more force than any speech could have.
Natalie felt no relief.
Only clarity.
Daniel sat back.
“I need you to stay away from her.”
Richard nodded once.
“For how long?” he asked.
Daniel looked at Natalie.
She did not answer for him.
Daniel turned back to his father.
“Until she asks to see you.”
Richard’s face tightened.
“She’s four.”
“Yes.”
“She could forget me.”
“Yes.”
The word hit harder than Natalie expected.
Richard looked toward her.
She saw an accusation there.
Then he seemed to decide against it.
“When she asks,” he said, “what then?”
Daniel took a breath.
“Then you apologize to her.”
“I just apologized.”
“To us.”
“I can’t have this conversation with a four-year-old.”
“You had the other one.”
Richard looked down.
Elaine finally ate the mint.
The wrapper made a small crackling sound in the silence.
Two weeks passed.
Richard did not contact Lily.
He texted Daniel twice.
Once about a box of financial records.
Once about baseball.
Daniel answered the first message and ignored the second.
Elaine stayed in the house.
Natalie did not move in immediately.
The decision surprised everyone, including herself.
The morning the movers finished removing Richard’s things, she stood alone in the dining room.
The table remained.
It technically belonged to Elaine, who had bought it twenty-seven years earlier from an antiques dealer in Connecticut. Natalie had assumed Richard owned everything expensive in the house.
She was learning otherwise.
The cream chairs stayed too.
The chandelier.
The white cabinets.
The curtains.
Enough of Richard remained in the architecture that Natalie could not imagine placing Lily’s cereal bowl there the next morning and pretending ownership had erased history.
Daniel found her sitting on the floor near the turquoise stain.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
He leaned against the doorway.
“You’ve been here forty minutes.”
“I’m sitting.”
“I can see that.”
She looked at the seam between the floorboards.
“The contractor says we can sand this.”
Daniel came closer.
“The frosting?”
“Yeah.”
He crouched.
A thin line of blue-green remained in the dark wood.
“You want to?”
Natalie looked at him.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel sat beside her.
Their shoulders nearly touched.
He picked at a tiny dried spot with his fingernail.
“It’s ugly.”
“It is.”
“Lily likes turquoise.”
“She likes light yellow now.”
“Right.”
They sat quietly.
After a minute Daniel said, “I don’t want to work for him.”
Natalie turned.
“The company.”
“I know.”
“I told him yesterday.”
“You saw him?”
“At his office.”
Natalie felt herself stiffen.
Daniel noticed.
“I was going to tell you tonight.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Then she caught the irony.
Daniel did too.
A reluctant smile crossed his face.
“Apparently this family has a disclosure problem.”
“Not funny.”
“A little funny.”
She looked away.
“What did he say?”
“He asked if you made me decide.”
“And?”
“I told him if he needed to believe that, he could.”
Natalie stared at him.
“That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I’ve had a weird month.”
“It’s been two weeks.”
“Feels like fiscal quarters.”
She laughed.
Daniel picked at the frosting again.
“He offered me more money.”
“Of course.”
“Then a title.”
“Of course.”
“Then the house.”
Natalie stopped laughing.
“What?”
“He said he’d buy it back from you for whatever you paid plus ten percent and put it in my name.”
Natalie looked toward the ceiling.
“That man.”
“I said no.”
“Because you don’t want the house?”
Daniel’s hand stilled.
“Because I don’t want him buying me.”
Natalie looked at him.
He continued.
“I also told him I’m angry at you for buying it.”
“Great.”
“And that those things can both be true.”
She nodded slowly.
“They can.”
“He hated that.”
“I’m sure.”
Daniel leaned back on his hands.
“I’m taking the promotion at the hospital.”
Natalie blinked.
“You said the schedule was terrible.”
“It is.”
“You said administration would make you miserable.”
“It probably will.”
“Then why?”
“Because I want to.”
She looked at him.
That was enough.
A month after the birthday dinner, Lily asked about Richard.
Not because she missed him.
Because the dollhouse door broke.
Daniel was trying to fix it with a tiny screwdriver while Lily hovered beside him giving instructions.
“Grandpa Richard fixes doors.”
Daniel stopped.
Natalie, folding laundry on the couch, looked up.
Lily continued.
“He fixed Grandma’s pantry.”
“That’s true,” Daniel said.
“Can he fix this?”
Daniel glanced at Natalie.
She set down a towel.
“Maybe.”
Lily waited.
Daniel put the screwdriver on the floor.
“Do you want to see Grandpa Richard?”
Lily shrugged.
“Will he be mean?”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“I don’t know.”
Lily looked surprised by the answer.
Adults were supposed to know these things.
Daniel continued.
“If he is, we leave.”
“You too?”
“Yes.”
“Mommy too?”
“Yes.”
Lily looked toward Natalie.
Natalie nodded.
May you like
“You decide,” she said.
Lily thought about it for perhaps three seconds.
