Chương 9
“Do you live here because you’re poor?”
“Lucy,” Daniel said.
Rachel almost smiled.
“I live here because Margaret lets me rent it cheap.”
“So yes?”
“A little.”
Lucy nodded as if this confirmed something useful.
They sat.
Noah and Lucy took the sofa.
Daniel chose an armchair.
Rachel remained on a wooden dining chair across from them.
Nobody knew how to begin.
A lawn mower started somewhere behind the house.
The noise lasted long enough to make conversation impossible.
For three minutes, the five people—four present and Elise absent but somehow everywhere—sat listening to somebody mow grass.
Rachel folded and unfolded the corner of a paper napkin on the table.
Noah stared at her shoes.
Lucy leaned against him.
When the mower finally moved farther away, Rachel said, “I’m sorry.”
Noah’s eyes stayed down.
“That’s it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Rachel nodded.
“I took the money because I was scared.”
“Of Dad?”
“No.”
“Of us?”
“Never.”
“Of what?”
Rachel looked at Daniel.
He said nothing.
“Of losing you permanently,” she said. “Which sounds stupid because I ended up doing exactly that.”
Noah waited.
Rachel rubbed her palms on her jeans.
“I had relapsed. Your dad had every reason to be furious. I had made promises before. I broke them. After the apartment…”
Lucy looked at her.
“What apartment?”
Daniel said quietly, “You were little.”
“I’m still little.”
“No,” Noah said. “You’re medium.”
Lucy elbowed him.
For one second, Rachel smiled.
Then the smile disappeared.
“I took medicine I wasn’t supposed to take,” she told Lucy. “Too much. I fell asleep when I was supposed to be taking care of you.”
“Was I scared?”
“I don’t know.”
“You were watching SpongeBob,” Noah said.
Lucy considered this.
“Okay.”
Rachel’s eyes went to Daniel again.
He remembered finding her on the bathroom floor.
“I went to treatment,” Rachel continued. “But I had bills. I had no job. My landlord was going to evict me. I thought your dad was going to ask the court to stop me from seeing you.”
“I was,” Daniel said.
Both children looked at him.
He did not hide from it.
“I was going to ask for supervised visits until she was stable.”
Rachel nodded.
“I didn’t know that. Elise told me he wanted me gone completely.”
Noah looked at Daniel.
“I didn’t.”
Rachel reached into the pocket of her sweater and took out a folded sheet of paper.
She placed it on the table.
“I believed he did because she showed me emails.”
Daniel did not need to read them.
“I saw the archive.”
Rachel’s face changed.
“You know?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“I don’t know what all of it is yet.”
She looked down.
“I thought you hated me.”
“I was angry with you.”
“That’s not what she said.”
“What did she say?”
Rachel hesitated.
“That you were relieved.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“That the kids were calmer without me. That you’d said my calls upset them. That if I cared about them, I would stop forcing myself into their lives.”
Lucy whispered, “Did you?”
Rachel looked at her.
“Did I what?”
“Care?”
Rachel’s eyes filled.
“Yes.”
“Then why did you stop?”
The room had no answer gentle enough for seven.
Rachel did not try to invent one.
“Because I was weak.”
Daniel looked at her.
She continued.
“I was ashamed. I had people telling me I was bad for you, and some of what they said was true. I thought maybe if I stayed away until I fixed everything…”
Her voice faded.
Noah said, “You could have called Dad.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought he agreed.”
“You could have called anyway.”
“Yes.”
“You know his number.”
“Yes.”
“You know his work.”
“Yes.”
“You know where we live.”
“Yes.”
Noah’s face reddened.
“So stop blaming Elise.”
Rachel sat very still.
Daniel watched the sentence hit her.
“You’re right,” she said.
Noah blinked.
Rachel went on.
“She lied to me. She manipulated me. But I made choices too.”
Daniel looked at her.
That was more than Elise had managed in the first hour.
Rachel’s fingers tightened around the napkin.
“I called once.”
Daniel’s head lifted.
“When?”
“Two days after I left.”
“My phone?”
“Your office.”
“Who answered?”
“Voicemail.”
Daniel frowned.
“My office voicemail goes to email.”
“I left a message.”
“What did you say?”
“That I was alive.”
The room shifted again.
“I never got it.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Elise wrote me that night. She said you heard it and told her to handle me.”
Daniel’s hand curled around the armrest.
“Do you still have that message?”
“No.”
“The email from Elise?”
“Yes.”
“Show me later.”
Rachel nodded.
Daniel pulled out his phone and made a note to have his company’s IT department check archived voicemail records. He hated himself for immediately turning the moment into evidence, but evidence was safer than emotion.
Noah watched.
“Are you going to get Elise arrested?”
Daniel put the phone away.
“I don’t know.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to?”
Daniel thought of the fake email account. The payment. The harbor. The children waiting for a body that did not exist.
“Yes.”
Noah seemed surprised by the answer.
Daniel added, “Wanting something and deciding it’s the right thing are different.”
Rachel looked at him.
“That sounds like you.”
He almost smiled.
“It annoyed Noah too.”
Lucy had been staring at Rachel’s hands.
“Where’s your ring?”
Rachel looked confused.
“What ring?”
“Your wedding ring.”
“Your dad and I aren’t married anymore.”
“I know, but you wore it on the other hand.”
Rachel looked at her right hand.
A pale groove was still faintly visible.
“I sold it.”
Lucy’s eyes widened.
“Why?”
“Rent.”
“That’s sad.”
“It was.”
Lucy looked toward Daniel.
“Did you sell yours?”
“No.”
“You put it in the sock drawer.”
Daniel stared at her.
Rachel made an unexpected sound.
A laugh.
It escaped before she could stop it.
Noah looked at Daniel.
“You put it in the sock drawer?”
May you like
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
“I was going through a complicated period.”
