Chương 5
“You should’ve texted.”
“I did.”
He checked his phone.
She had.
He had missed it.
“I don’t think you should stay here.”
Claire laughed softly.
“It’s my house too.”
“I know.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”
She set the bag down.
“Rachel thinks I should get a lawyer.”
“That’s probably a good idea.”
Her face changed.
She had expected him to tell her not to.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Daniel, do you hear yourself?”
He did.
That was new.
Claire stepped closer.
“Look at me.”
He did.
“I made a mistake yesterday.”
He waited.
“I was angry. The girls weren’t listening. I shut the door for a minute.”
“You turned off the camera.”
Her eyes flickered.
Daniel saw it.
Not guilt exactly.
Calculation.
“What?”
“The patio camera.”
“It doesn’t work half the time.”
“You paused it.”
Claire looked away.
“The notifications drive me insane.”
“Only on days I’m at work?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Build some little case in your head.”
“I didn’t build it.”
She pressed her lips together.
“This is what Laura wants.”
Daniel felt anger come back so fast it almost relieved him.
“Do not blame Laura.”
“She has been waiting for me to screw up since the day I moved in.”
“This has nothing to do with Laura.”
“It has everything to do with Laura. She hates that the girls like me.”
Daniel almost said, They’re afraid of you.
He stopped because the sentence was too easy.
He did not yet know everything.
The old Daniel would have respected that uncertainty by retreating from it.
This time he said, “Maya says you grabbed her.”
“I did. I told you that.”
“Sophie saw it.”
“Sophie sees whatever Maya tells her to see.”
“That’s a disgusting thing to say about a six-year-old.”
Claire’s face tightened.
“See? You already decided.”
“I decided I’m going to listen.”
“To everyone except me.”
He stared at her.
Claire wiped at one eye with the heel of her hand and looked irritated at herself for crying.
Then she said, “You know what it’s like with them.”
The sentence was quiet.
Almost intimate.
Daniel felt something in him recoil.
“What does that mean?”
“You complain too.”
“About homework.”
“About everything. About how Maya argues. About Sophie refusing to sleep. About never having a weekend. About Laura changing plans. About how sometimes you sit in the truck for ten minutes before coming inside because you need quiet.”
Daniel went cold.
Claire continued.
“I’m not some monster who arrived and started torturing your children. I was doing what you asked me to do. I was helping.”
“I never asked you to lock them out.”
“No. You asked me to handle things because you were tired.”
That was true.
Not the way she meant it.
But true enough to hurt.
Claire picked up her bag.
“I’m getting clothes.”
Daniel stepped aside.
She walked upstairs.
He stood at the bottom and listened to drawers opening.
The instinct to follow her was powerful.
So was the instinct to sit down and pretend none of this was happening.
He did neither.
He called Brooks.
“Claire’s here getting clothes.”
“Is there a confrontation?”
“No.”
“Do you feel unsafe?”
“No.”
“Are the children there?”
“No.”
“Then keep your distance. If anything changes, call.”
Daniel hung up.
Ten minutes later, Claire came downstairs with a larger suitcase.
At the front door she stopped.
“Are you going to throw away three years over one bad afternoon?”
Daniel looked at her.
“I don’t know what I’m throwing away yet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No.”
Her mouth trembled.
He almost went to her.
His body remembered comforting her before his mind could stop it.
Claire saw that too.
For one second, both of them stood inside the shape of their old life.
Then she left.
The next three days were not dramatic.
Daniel hated them for that.
He went to work because his paid leave would not last forever. He replaced a damaged relay at a substation while another technician complained about a fantasy baseball trade. He ate a turkey sandwich in his truck and realized halfway through that he had forgotten mustard.
He checked his phone forty times.
Laura sent one picture of Sophie doing a puzzle.
Maya was not in it.
At school, the girls met separately with a counselor.
A social worker interviewed Daniel again.
Claire apparently had her own interview.
Nobody told him what she said.
His mother called and asked whether she should come over.
Daniel said no.
Then, two hours later, he called her back and asked if she could bring food.
She arrived with lasagna and did not mention Claire for the first twenty minutes.
Instead she complained that Daniel’s dishwasher smelled strange.
He nearly laughed.
“Mom.”
“I’m serious.”
“Please don’t fix my dishwasher.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You’re holding a screwdriver.”
She looked at the screwdriver in her hand as though someone else had put it there.
“Fine.”
They sat at the table.
His mother, Carol, folded a paper napkin into smaller and smaller squares.
Finally she asked, “Did I ever make you feel like I wouldn’t believe you?”
Daniel looked at her.
“What?”
“When you were little.”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I don’t know.”
Carol nodded.
“I ask because parents remember themselves generously.”
Daniel looked down.
She flattened the napkin.
“When you were ten, you told me Coach Miller called you stupid.”
Daniel frowned.
“I don’t remember that.”
“I do.”
“What happened?”
“I told you he probably meant you had done something stupid, not that you were stupid.”
Daniel waited.
Carol smiled without humor.
“You stopped telling me about Coach Miller.”
A truck passed outside.
The broken chain tapped once against the glass.
Carol said, “I found out years later he was cruel to half the boys on that team. Nothing criminal. Just cruel. The kind adults excuse because children survive it.”
Daniel rubbed his thumb over the edge of the table.
May you like
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I loved you. And I still got it wrong.”
