Chương 4
Laura waited.
Daniel stopped at another light.
His father, Charles Bennett, had been dead for eighteen months.
A heart attack on a golf course in Scottsdale.
Margaret had received the call while she was buying tulips at a grocery store and spent the first six months afterward refusing to remove his shoes from their bedroom closet.
For all her cruelty, grief had made her briefly human to Laura.
That memory now felt inconvenient.
“What did Charles supposedly tell her?”
Daniel rubbed his thumb over the steering wheel seam.
“That he wondered whether I could have children.”
Laura stared.
“Why?”
“When I was twenty-eight, I had that surgery.”
She remembered.
A benign testicular tumor. Small. Removed early.
Daniel had mentioned it on their third date in the same tone he used to explain a parking ticket.
“They told you fertility could be affected.”
“Yes.”
“You told me your follow-up testing was normal.”
“It was.”
“Did Margaret know that?”
“I thought so.”
Laura leaned back.
“And she decided a seven-year-old child should carry the burden of a medical possibility you resolved fourteen years ago.”
“She didn’t put it that way.”
“How did she put it?”
Daniel’s face went hard.
“She said Dad had privately wondered whether my results had been as good as I claimed.”
Laura stared.
“Did he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you lie?”
“No.”
“Then why did you agree to another test?”
He didn’t answer.
Laura knew before he spoke.
“Because she kept asking.”
Daniel’s eyes met hers in the mirror.
“Yes.”
There it was.
Not mystery.
Not conspiracy.
Weakness.
Ordinary, exhausting weakness.
The kind that rarely looked dangerous until someone smaller paid for it.
Sophie moved in her sleep and curled her fingers around Laura’s sleeve.
At home, Laura carried her upstairs while Daniel brought in the purple art set and Sophie’s overnight bag.
They had packed it because Sophie had been scheduled to sleep at Margaret’s house after the party.
The thought made Laura stop halfway up the stairs.
Daniel nearly bumped into her.
“What?”
Laura looked at the small unicorn suitcase in his hand.
“She was supposed to stay there tonight.”
Daniel’s face changed.
“I know.”
“Your mother planned to tell her that and then keep her overnight.”
“I don’t know what she planned.”
Laura looked at him until he corrected himself.
“You’re right. That’s bad.”
“Put the bag in her room.”
Sophie woke when Laura laid her on the bed.
“Is the party over?”
“Yes.”
“Did people eat the cake?”
“I’m sure they did.”
“I didn’t get any.”
Laura touched her hair.
“We can get cake tomorrow.”
Sophie frowned.
“My cake.”
“Yes.”
“The strawberry one.”
“We can get another strawberry cake.”
“That’s not the same cake.”
“No.”
Sophie looked toward the doorway where Daniel stood.
“Can Daddy go get it?”
Daniel immediately said, “Yes.”
Laura almost objected.
Then she didn’t.
Sophie’s world had cracked open in a way adults would spend days discussing.
She wanted cake.
“Okay,” Laura said.
Daniel left without taking off his jacket.
Twenty minutes later he returned with the entire upper tier of the cake in a white bakery box.
Margaret had sent it.
Laura knew because a note was taped to the lid.
FOR SOPHIE. LOVE, GRANDMA.
Laura removed the note before Sophie saw it.
She did not throw it away.
She folded it once and placed it beside the DNA report on the kitchen counter.
Daniel watched.
“Why are you keeping that?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He opened his mouth.
Laura pointed toward the stairs.
“Not in front of her.”
They ate cake at the kitchen table.
Sophie took three bites of frosting and almost none of the cake.
Daniel tried to make her laugh by showing her a video of a dachshund attempting to carry a long stick through a narrow gate.
Normally Sophie loved animal videos.
Tonight she watched politely.
When it ended, she said, “Was the dog bad?”
Daniel looked at Laura.
“No,” he said. “He just didn’t understand the gate.”
“Did the gate not want him?”
Laura closed her eyes for one second.
Daniel put the phone facedown.
“No, honey.”
Sophie scraped frosting with her fork.
“Grandma said families have gates.”
Laura looked at Daniel.
His face went gray.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Sophie shrugged.
“She said some people are inside and some people aren’t.”
Laura’s fingernails pressed into her palm.
“What else did she say?”
Sophie looked worried.
“Am I supposed to remember?”
“No,” Laura said quickly. “No. You don’t have to remember anything.”
“I can.”
“You don’t have to.”
Sophie looked at her cake.
“Grandma said she was sorry you didn’t tell me sooner.”
Daniel pushed his chair back slightly.
Laura reached under the table and touched his knee.
Not comfort.
A warning.
Do not make your reaction her responsibility.
Daniel went still.
Sophie continued.
“She said Dad would be sad, but grown-ups have to know the truth.”
Laura said, “Did she tell you Daddy knew?”
“No.”
“Did she say where she got the test?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
Sophie took another bite.
After a while she said, “Can I sleep in your room?”
Laura answered before Daniel could.
“Yes.”
They put a sleeping bag beside their bed because Sophie liked the idea better than sleeping between them.
She brushed her teeth with a new toothbrush Laura took from a sealed multipack under the sink.
That detail was ridiculous.
It also mattered.
When Sophie was asleep, Laura went downstairs and opened every bathroom cabinet.
Daniel followed.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking.”
“For what?”
“For missing toothbrushes.”
“Laura.”
She turned.
“Don’t.”
He stopped.
In the upstairs guest bathroom, the cup beside the sink held two toothbrushes.
One was Daniel’s old travel toothbrush.
The other was a child’s pink toothbrush with a glitter handle.
Laura stared at it.
Sophie had used that bathroom two months earlier when Margaret stayed with them for a weekend after having cataract surgery.
Laura remembered buying a three-pack because Sophie had forgotten hers at a sleepover.
Pink.
Purple.
May you like
Green.
Laura had put the extra two under the guest sink.
