Chương 13
“Yes.”
“So you decided for him.”
“Yes.”
Richard looked back at her.
“You really are like me.”
Natalie felt the sentence in her stomach.
He saw it.
“Not entirely,” he added.
She did not let him soften it.
“No. You’re right.”
Richard’s eyebrows rose.
Natalie picked up a glass and turned it in her hand.
“I spent a lot of time being furious that Daniel froze for three seconds because you trained him to. Then I realized I bought an entire house because I didn’t trust him to make a decision I could live with.”
Richard said nothing.
“That isn’t the same as what you do,” she continued. “But it comes from the same ugly place.”
“Fear?”
“Control.”
Richard looked at the floor.
“Same thing, sometimes.”
Natalie considered that.
Then she nodded.
Behind them, Lily ran into the room.
“Mommy, Daddy says Grandma is doing dishes wrong.”
Elaine shouted from the kitchen, “Your father is a liar.”
Daniel called, “I said inefficiently.”
Lily looked at Richard.
“What’s in-effish-ent-ly?”
Richard glanced at Natalie.
“Apparently how your grandmother loads a dishwasher.”
Elaine yelled, “Do not recruit the child.”
Lily laughed.
Richard laughed too.
Natalie stood in the middle of the room and listened.
Nothing was solved completely.
Elaine still kept her apartment.
Richard still corrected people too quickly.
Daniel still hesitated before disagreeing with his father, though now he usually caught himself.
Natalie still made large decisions faster than she admitted and apologized slower than she should.
Lily still sometimes asked, before family dinners, whether anyone was going to be mad.
Trust had not returned because one man said sorry in a bakery.
It returned in pieces.
A spilled glass.
A repaired dollhouse hinge.
A question answered without punishment.
A dinner that ended normally.
Months later, on Lily’s fifth birthday, Natalie woke at six thirty to find her standing beside the bed in yellow pajamas.
“Is my cake here?”
Natalie opened one eye.
“It is six thirty in the morning.”
“I know.”
“No cake until the party.”
Lily sighed theatrically.
Daniel groaned under the blanket.
“Tell her birthdays start at noon.”
“They do not,” Lily said.
Natalie smiled.
“Go watch cartoons.”
Lily ran out.
Daniel pulled the blanket down.
“You’re making the cake, right?”
“I ordered one.”
His eyes widened.
“You ordered it?”
“Yes.”
“From where?”
“The same bakery.”
Daniel studied her.
“Are you sure?”
Natalie knew what he meant.
The turquoise frosting.
The red sugar bow.
The hardwood floor.
The sentence nobody in the family would ever entirely forget.
“I’m sure.”
The party began at two.
Preschool friends arrived with parents carrying gift bags and jackets. Elaine tied balloons to the stair rail. Daniel burned one tray of mini pizzas and successfully hid the evidence outside in the trash.
Richard arrived at two twenty.
He paused at the front door when he saw the dining room filled with children.
Natalie noticed.
“Too late to escape.”
“I was considering it.”
“You can hide in the kitchen.”
“I’m not afraid of children.”
A balloon popped.
Richard flinched.
Natalie smiled.
“Clearly.”
He gave her an annoyed look and went inside.
He had brought a small wrapped package.
Natalie glanced at it.
“Books,” he said.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You looked.”
“I have eyes.”
“An intrusive quality.”
The exchange would once have been hostile.
Now it was simply them.
At three fifteen, Natalie carried in the cake.
Turquoise frosting.
Red sugar bow.
Daniel saw it first.
His expression changed.
Elaine stopped talking.
Richard went very still.
The children did not notice.
Lily did.
She stared at the cake.
Then she smiled.
“It’s the same.”
Natalie placed it in front of her.
“Almost.”
The bakery had made it slightly larger.
Five candles instead of four.
Lily touched the red bow with one finger.
Natalie did not stop her.
Richard stood across the table.
For one second, his eyes met Natalie’s.
She could see the memory in his face.
So could Daniel.
No one mentioned it.
The children sang badly and loudly.
Lily blew out four candles on the first try.
The fifth stayed lit.
She laughed and blew again.
Everyone clapped.
Natalie handed her the cake knife but guided her wrist.
Lily cut the first slice crooked.
“Who gets it?” Daniel asked.
Lily looked around the table.
She pointed.
“Grandpa Richard.”
The room became quiet in a way only the adults understood.
Richard did not move.
Lily frowned.
“Do you want cake?”
He swallowed.
“Yes.”
Natalie placed the slice on a plate.
She handed it across the table.
Richard took it with both hands.
“Thank you, Lily.”
“You can have the bow part next.”
He looked down at the turquoise frosting.
“That’s generous.”
“I’m five.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Lily grinned and returned to cutting.
A little frosting smeared onto the table.
Nobody reacted.
Later, after the guests left and wrapping paper filled two trash bags, Lily wandered into the dining room holding the last piece of cake.
Natalie was wiping the table.
Daniel was stacking plates.
Richard and Elaine stood near the doorway discussing something about parking.
Lily climbed onto a chair.
“Mommy.”
“Yes?”
“Whose chair is this?”
Natalie looked at her.
A year earlier, anger would have supplied the answer.
Every seat at this table belongs to you.
She had meant it as defiance.
She did not want Lily carrying defiance as inheritance.
Natalie put down the cloth.
“Right now?”
Lily nodded.
“You’re sitting in it.”
“So mine?”
“For now.”
Lily seemed satisfied.
She took a bite of cake.
Richard watched from the doorway.
Natalie looked at him.
He understood.
She could tell he did because he did not speak.
No declarations.
No promises.
No claim that the family had been remade into something perfect.
The dark table still had a shallow dent where Natalie had slammed the deed down. One cream chair had a new fabric panel that did not quite match the others. The floor no longer carried turquoise frosting, though Natalie could still point to the exact board if asked.
Daniel came beside her with the plates.
“Leave those,” she said.
“I’m helping.”
“You’re stacking clean plates on dirty ones.”
He looked down.
“Oh.”
Natalie laughed.
Elaine called from the hall, “I told you he was inefficient.”
Daniel raised his voice.
“Mom, this is harassment.”
Lily giggled.
Richard opened the front door for Elaine.
Before stepping outside, he glanced back at the dining table.
Lily sat there swinging her legs, turquoise frosting on the corner of her mouth, talking to Daniel about whether rabbits could have birthday parties.
Richard looked at Natalie.
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
He left.
The door closed.
Lily finished her cake and pushed the empty plate away.
“Can I sit in a different chair now?”
Natalie looked around the long dark table.
“Any one you want.”
Lily climbed down.
She considered all the chairs as seriously as if choosing a new country.
Then she crossed to the one beside Daniel.
He pulled it out for her.
She climbed up, tucked one foot under herself, and began telling him something complicated about a rabbit, a balloon, and a preschool rule that almost certainly did not exist.
May you like
Natalie listened while she wiped the last streak of turquoise frosting from the table.
This time, it came off easily.
