Chương 2
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“No. It doesn’t.”
“Are you getting divorced?”
Sarah heard Daniel take a breath.
She answered first.
“Yes.”
Leo looked down.
The paper moved slightly in his hand.
The dog rose, stretched, and walked toward him. Leo did not seem to notice until the dog sat beside the present and leaned against his ankle.
Daniel’s voice came quietly.
“I’m going to move into an apartment a few blocks away.”
Leo looked up.
“When?”
Daniel waited a beat too long.
“When?”
“Tuesday.”
It was Friday.
Christmas morning.
Four days.
Leo’s face emptied.
Sarah had seen adults do that in hospitals and funeral homes, when the information was too large and the body protected itself by becoming very still.
“Tuesday,” he repeated.
Daniel nodded.
“So you were going to tell me Sunday.”
“Yes.”
“And then Tuesday you were just going to go.”
“I wasn’t just going to go.”
“You got an apartment.”
“Yes.”
“You put your stuff there?”
“Some of it.”
Leo looked toward the staircase.
Sarah followed his gaze.
Daniel’s side of their bedroom closet had been thinning for three weeks.
Sarah had been moving his empty hangers to the back so Leo would not notice.
Of course he had noticed.
He noticed when the cereal boxes changed positions in the pantry.
He noticed when his teacher wore different glasses.
He had noticed.
“Which one of you is leaving me?” he asked.
“No one.”
Sarah and Daniel said it together.
Leo gave them a look so tired it did not belong on a child.
“One of you is leaving this house.”
Daniel leaned forward.
“I’m leaving the house. I am not leaving you.”
“What’s the difference?”
Daniel had no answer ready.
Neither did Sarah.
Leo stepped down from the box.
He placed the papers on top of it, carefully now, lining the edges with the corner of the package.
Then he walked past the tree.
Sarah stood.
“Leo.”
He kept going.
“Where are you going?”
“My room.”
“Can we come up?”
“No.”
“Can one of us?”
“No.”
Daniel stood.
Leo turned at the bottom of the stairs.
“I don’t want presents,” he said. “I want to know which one of you is leaving me.”
Then he went upstairs.
The dog followed him halfway, paused, looked back at Sarah, then continued.
His bedroom door closed.
Not slammed.
Closed.
Daniel remained standing in the middle of the living room.
The tree blinked cheerfully behind him.
Sarah picked up her mug and discovered her hand was shaking hard enough to move the coffee.
Daniel said, “How did he get those?”
She put the mug down again.
“Does that matter right now?”
“I’m asking because they were in your office.”
“Our office.”
“You were the one printing attorney documents in the house.”
“And you were the one who left the apartment lease in your gym bag.”
“He didn’t find the lease.”
“We don’t know what he found.”
Daniel stared toward the stairs.
Sarah immediately regretted the argument, not because it was wrong but because it was familiar. That was what frightened her most about the last year. They could take any subject—a doctor’s bill, soccer practice, dish soap, sex, his mother, her sister, a broken garage door—and within four sentences find their way to the same old place.
Who had failed first.
Who had tried longer.
Who had been left alone with the consequences.
Daniel picked up the divorce papers.
Leo had drawn a pencil line beside the paragraph about temporary parenting arrangements.
Daniel’s thumb stopped there.
“He read this.”
“He’s eight.”
“He reads everything.”
“I know how old he is.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She folded her arms.
He exhaled and sat again.
For a moment he looked older than forty. His beard needed trimming. There was a crease between his eyebrows Sarah had once found attractive because it appeared when he concentrated. It had become permanent during the last two years.
“I told you we should have told him before Christmas,” Daniel said.
Sarah stared at him.
“You did not.”
“I said waiting was risky.”
“You said we should wait until the apartment was ready.”
“I said if we were waiting, we should at least make sure he could see where I was going.”
“That is not the same thing.”
Daniel put the papers down.
“Fine.”
“No. Not fine.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you not to rewrite the last month because you feel guilty.”
His eyes lifted.
“You think I don’t feel guilty?”
“I think guilt is easier for you than responsibility.”
The sentence landed harder than she intended.
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
Sarah looked away.
On the floor beside the tree was a small wrapped box Leo had carried down the previous night and placed there himself. He had written MAMA on one side and DAD on the other because it was apparently for both of them.
She had almost asked him what it was.
Now she wished she had.
Daniel rubbed his palms together.
“We can’t do this.”
“What?”
“This. Today.”
A short laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
“Apparently we can.”
“I mean fight.”
“I know what you mean.”
“We need to go upstairs.”
“He asked us not to.”
“He’s eight.”
“He’s also the only person in this house who was just told his father is moving out in four days.”
Daniel’s eyes flashed.
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I decided this.”
Sarah stared at him.
There it was.
The trapdoor beneath almost every conversation they had now.
He saw it too.
His face changed.
“I’m not doing this,” he said.
“You already are.”
“No. I’m not.”
He stood, went into the kitchen, and turned on the faucet for no reason Sarah could understand. He filled a glass, drank half of it, then stood with one hand on the counter.
May you like
Sarah watched his back.
For sixteen years she had known the exact set of his shoulders that meant he was angry but afraid anger would make him lose the argument.
