Chương 5
It would have been easier if cruelty announced itself cleanly.
Instead it sat under chandeliers, corrected posture, worried about photographs, and convinced itself it was protecting the family.
After cake, Daniel took Lucy upstairs.
Her room was at the east end of the second floor, next to the suite that had once belonged to Rebecca. When Lucy moved into Mercer House after her mother’s death, Evelyn had redecorated the bedroom in pale green without asking her. Lucy had spent the next two years filling it with bright, unrelated things: an orange lamp, a purple rug, a row of glass animals, three posters of deep-sea creatures, and a paper model of the solar system that hung crookedly from the ceiling.
Daniel sat on the edge of her bed while she changed in the bathroom.
The crown rested on her desk.
He looked at it and remembered Anne helping Lucy make a different crown when she was four. Anne had used aluminum foil because they had no craft paper, and Lucy had worn it to the grocery store. A stranger had bowed to her near the oranges.
The memory arrived with such clarity that Daniel pressed his thumb against his wedding ring before remembering he no longer wore it. The ring had been in the top drawer of his desk for three years.
Lucy came out wearing flannel pajamas patterned with foxes.
“Are they going to be mad at me?” she asked.
“They may be.”
She climbed into bed. “Because I told?”
“Because they don’t like what the truth makes them feel.”
“Is that my fault?”
“No.”
She pulled the blanket to her chin.
Daniel turned on the bedside lamp and switched off the overhead light.
“Did things like this happen while I was away?”
Lucy watched the paper planets turning slightly above her.
“Sometimes.”
The word made him sit straighter.
“What things?”
She shrugged beneath the blanket.
“Lucy.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did anyone put you behind the bench before?”
“No.”
“Did anyone hurt you?”
“No.”
“Did anyone threaten you?”
“No.”
He let out a breath.
She added, “They don’t hurt me. They just get tired of me.”
Daniel said nothing.
From downstairs came the muted sound of a door closing.
Lucy traced one fox on the blanket with her finger.
“Celeste says I make everything heavy.”
“When does she say that?”
“When I ask about Mom. Or when I don’t want to call her Mom. I don’t have to call her that, right?”
“No.”
“Dad says I don’t have to, but then he gets quiet.”
Daniel looked toward the window. Snow pressed softly against the dark glass.
“Has your father talked to you about any of this?”
“He says Celeste is trying.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Lucy frowned, concentrating.
“He says families don’t work if one person keeps standing outside.”
“Who is the one person?”
“Me, I think.”
Daniel rubbed one hand over his face.
He had believed Lucy was safe because she lived under his roof. He had believed proximity was a form of attention. He traveled, attended meetings, reviewed reports, and came home to find homework on the kitchen island or Lucy asleep on the library sofa. He asked about school, bought books she mentioned once, knew the names of her teachers, signed permission forms when Jonathan forgot.
He had mistaken administration for presence.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked.
Lucy’s eyes filled, and he regretted the question immediately.
“I’m not here,” he said. “I mean—I am, but I’m gone too much.”
“You’re busy.”
“That doesn’t make it your job to protect me from things.”
“I didn’t want Dad to get divorced again.”
Daniel looked at her.
She rolled onto her side, facing the wall.
“Celeste said everyone has to make sacrifices so families stay together.”
“When did she say that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Recently?”
“At Thanksgiving.”
“What had happened?”
“I asked if we could put Mom’s pie recipe on the menu.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Rebecca’s apple pie had been terrible. Even Anne, who loved her, had once described the crust as “structurally ambitious.” Every Thanksgiving, Rebecca made it anyway.
“What did Celeste say?”
“That it was her house too now, and I should stop making Dad choose between the living and the dead.”
The sentence did not sound like Lucy. That made it worse.
“Did your father hear her?”
Lucy nodded.
“What did he do?”
“He went outside.”
Daniel sat in the dim room with his hands clasped between his knees.
“Uncle Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“Can I still live here?”
He turned toward her.
“This is your home.”
“Even if they move?”
The practical fear beneath the question cut through his anger.
“Yes,” he said. Then, because promises to children should not be made merely to calm them, he corrected himself. “I will do everything I can to make sure you are safe and have a home where you’re wanted.”
“That sounds like when doctors don’t know.”
“It does.”
“Do you know?”
“I know I won’t ignore this.”
She studied him over the edge of the blanket.
“Can you stay until I fall asleep?”
Daniel removed his shoes and sat against the headboard.
Lucy settled beside him without touching him. He opened the book on her nightstand, a novel about a girl who discovered a hidden door in an old hotel.
“You’re on chapter twelve,” he said.
“I skipped eleven.”
“Why?”
“It was boring.”
“That is not how books work.”
“It is if you own them.”
He began reading at chapter twelve.
Halfway through the second page, her breathing slowed. By the fourth, her eyes were closed. He kept reading for another paragraph, then stopped.
When he left the room, Jonathan was waiting in the hallway.
He had removed his dinner jacket and loosened his tie. Without the formal structure, he looked more like the younger brother Daniel remembered: tired, handsome, and perpetually on the verge of asking someone else to forgive what he had not yet admitted.
“How is she?” Jonathan asked.
May you like
“Asleep.”
“I need to talk to her.”
