Chương 10
Tom considered.
“I’m choosing not to pretend this was normal.”
Evan looked at his father.
Tom’s face had changed over the past few weeks. Or perhaps Evan had started looking harder.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
Tom nodded.
“Apparently it runs in the family.”
Evan almost objected.
Then he remembered Aaron.
He sat back.
Tom looked into his coffee.
“I spent forty-six years believing the best thing I could do in a marriage was keep the temperature down. Your mother gets worked up, I wait. She gets offended, I make a joke. She wants something unreasonable, I let her talk until it passes.”
“This didn’t pass.”
“No.”
“You helped it happen.”
“Yes.”
Evan had expected an argument.
The lack of one made anger harder to sustain.
Not impossible.
Just harder.
Tom folded the bank statement.
“She wants to apologize to Lily.”
“No.”
“I told her that.”
Evan looked at him.
“What did she say?”
“She said you were punishing her.”
“There it is.”
“I told her an apology is not a ticket.”
Evan was quiet.
Tom drank his terrible coffee.
After a while he said, “You know what the stupid part is?”
“I suspect there are several candidates.”
Tom almost smiled.
“She likes Rachel.”
“Could have fooled me.”
“She does.”
“Then why?”
Tom looked toward the window.
“Because she thought liking Rachel was different from trusting your life with Rachel.”
Evan felt his jaw tighten.
“My life is mine.”
“I know.”
“Apparently neither of you did.”
Tom flinched.
Evan immediately wished he could pull the sentence back.
He did not apologize.
Not yet.
Tom deserved part of it.
“She was scared,” Tom said.
“Of what?”
“That you’d get divorced.”
“People do.”
“I know.”
“And?”
“And then you’d be Lily’s father anyway.”
Evan stared at him.
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“Why does she think that’s a problem?”
Tom’s eyes moved back to his son.
“Because she thinks fatherhood is something a man should be able to walk away from if the marriage ends.”
Evan sat very still.
Tom continued.
“Her father did.”
Diane had rarely spoken about her father.
Evan knew only that he had left when she was fourteen and died years later in Arizona.
Tom rubbed one hand over his jaw.
“Your grandmother remarried. Her new husband raised Diane’s younger brother like his own until the marriage ended. Then he disappeared too. Diane was eighteen by then. Her brother was nine.”
Evan looked down.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes sense to her.”
“She thinks because somebody abandoned a kid, I should keep the option?”
“I didn’t say it was good sense.”
“Did she ever tell me this?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Tom gave him a tired look.
“You know your mother.”
That was not enough.
It was also true.
Diane hated stories in which she appeared powerless.
She preferred to tell the one about working two jobs in college, not the one about dropping out for a semester because her mother could not pay rent.
She told people her father “wasn’t around much.”
She never said abandoned.
Evan sat with the new information.
It softened nothing about the slap.
Nothing about Aaron.
Nothing about opening their mail.
But the shape of his mother’s fear became visible.
He hated that too.
It was easier when cruelty arrived without history.
The revised hearing date approached.
Aaron completed a letter for Lily and supplied updated family medical information through the attorneys.
His written withdrawal was filed.
Melissa told Evan and Rachel there were no guarantees until the judge signed the final order, but the problem Diane had created was no longer moving in the same dangerous direction.
They did not celebrate.
They bought groceries.
Rachel forgot milk.
Evan went back out for it.
At the store he stood in the dairy aisle staring at two nearly identical cartons because Lily had recently decided one brand tasted “too much like cow.”
His phone rang.
Diane.
He watched her name until the screen went dark.
Then it rang again.
He answered.
“Is something wrong?”
A pause.
“Hello to you too.”
“Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Then why are you calling?”
Another pause.
“I wanted to hear your voice.”
Evan looked at the milk.
“You have letters.”
“You sent one back.”
“Yes.”
“You kept the others.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
He closed his eyes.
“Mom.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
She exhaled sharply.
“Do we have to do this as a test?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
A store employee rolled a cart of yogurt past him.
Diane said, “I’m sorry I struck Lily.”
“Hit.”
“What?”
“You hit her.”
“I slapped her.”
“That’s hitting.”
“Fine. I hit her.”
A man beside Evan reached for oat milk and glanced over.
Evan lowered his voice.
“And?”
“I should not have contacted Aaron.”
“And?”
“I should not have opened your mail.”
“And?”
Her breathing changed.
He could picture her at the kitchen table in the house where he grew up, one hand around the phone, jaw set.
“And I should not have interfered.”
“Why did you?”
“I told you.”
“No. You’ve told everybody you were protecting me.”
“I was.”
“From what?”
“You know.”
“Say it.”
“Evan.”
“Say it.”
She was quiet for so long he thought the call had dropped.
Then she said, “From making a promise you might regret.”
He leaned against the refrigerated case.
“I already made it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“No. I don’t think you do.”
“You and Rachel nearly separated.”
“Yes.”
“You told me yourself.”
“I told you I was scared.”
“You said you felt trapped.”
“In my marriage.”
“That distinction disappears after adoption.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“You think that now.”
“I thought it then.”
“You were thirty-four and sitting alone in a motel telling me you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“Yes.”
“I am your mother.”
“Exactly.”
The word stopped her.
May you like
Evan stared at his reflection in the glass door.
“I called you because I was ashamed and angry and needed somewhere ugly to put it for one night. You took the ugliest thing I ever said and gave it to a stranger two years later because you wanted to win an argument I didn’t know we were having.”
