Chương 2
Then she crouched on the hardwood and began gathering the adoption papers.
Her hands shook so badly she had to pick up the same page three times.
Upstairs, Evan sat on Lily’s bed with her tucked against him.
The room smelled faintly of washable markers and the strawberry shampoo she had insisted on choosing because the bottle had a cartoon rabbit on it. Her stuffed fox lay facedown beneath the desk. Two library books were open near her pillow, one upside down.
Lily touched her cheek.
“Am I in trouble?”
The question went through him more cleanly than anger had.
“No.”
“For telling?”
“No, sweetheart.”
“Grandma said it was a grown-up thing.”
“It was.”
“And I listened.”
“That doesn’t make you bad.”
“She told Grandpa you were making a mistake.”
Evan kept his face still.
Lily studied him carefully.
Children, he had learned, noticed the things adults believed they were concealing.
“What kind of mistake?” he asked.
She rubbed her certificate ribbon between two fingers.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s okay.”
“She said you could still get out.”
His stomach tightened.
“Get out of what?”
Lily’s lower lip trembled again.
“She said after the judge you’d be stuck forever.”
Evan looked toward the doorway.
Rachel stood there holding the opened envelope.
She had heard.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Then Rachel sat beside them.
Lily leaned sideways until she was touching both parents at once.
Rachel examined her cheek under the bedside lamp.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
“Any headache?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
Lily shook her head.
Rachel kissed the top of her hair.
“Can I take a picture of your cheek?”
Lily frowned. “Why?”
“So we remember what happened exactly.”
“For court?”
Rachel and Evan exchanged a glance.
The adoption had made Lily familiar with words most first graders never needed: hearing, petition, consent, attorney. They had tried to keep the process boring. Paperwork Daddy had to do because grown-ups had complicated rules.
Now the word court had fear attached to it.
“Not because you did anything wrong,” Evan said. “And not because anybody’s taking you anywhere.”
“Grandma said—”
“I know what Grandma said.”
He caught the sharpness in his own voice and stopped.
Lily pulled back slightly.
Evan shut his eyes.
“Sorry,” he said. “That came out mad. I’m not mad at you.”
“You kicked the papers.”
“I did.”
“Really hard.”
“Yeah.”
“Mom says we don’t kick stuff.”
Rachel gave him a look over Lily’s head.
“Mom is correct.”
A tiny uncertain smile appeared on Lily’s face.
It vanished quickly, but Evan was grateful for it.
“I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “I was angry because Grandma hurt you, but being angry doesn’t make kicking things a good idea.”
“You didn’t kick a person.”
“No.”
“That’s better.”
“Low bar,” Rachel murmured.
Lily almost smiled again.
Rachel took two photographs of the red mark, then put her phone facedown on the nightstand. She did not make a production of it.
“Do you want ice?”
“No.”
“Popsicle?”
Lily considered this.
“What kind?”
“We have orange and grape.”
“Orange.”
Rachel went downstairs.
Evan stayed where he was.
Lily looked at the certificate in her hands. It was from that afternoon’s school assembly. MOST HELPFUL CLASSMATE was printed beneath her name, surrounded by small yellow stars.
She had come through the door waving it, thrilled because the ribbon was “real fabric, not printer ribbon,” and Tom had laughed and asked whether there was an award for most opinionated grandfather.
That had been forty minutes ago.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“If you’re not my real dad, what kind are you?”
Evan swallowed.
He could hear Rachel opening the freezer downstairs.
“The kind who makes your lunch wrong.”
“You put mustard.”
“You told me mustard.”
“I said no mustard.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘Mustard is okay now.’”
“That was one time.”
“Historic moment.”
She stared at him.
He let the joke die.
Then he said, “I’m the kind who has been your dad since you were little enough to fall asleep on my chest.”
“But not when I was born.”
“No.”
“Because Aaron was?”
They had never hidden Aaron’s name from her. They had a photograph of him in a folder downstairs, along with two letters he had written years apart. Evan had always believed secrets grew teeth in the dark.
“Yes,” he said. “Aaron is your biological father.”
“Bio-logical.”
“That means you got some things from him when you were born. Maybe your hair. Maybe your nose. We don’t know which things.”
“And you?”
“I got you when you were almost two.”
“You married Mom.”
“I did.”
“And then I got you.”
“That’s pretty much how I remember it.”
Lily pressed her cheek against his chest.
“Can the judge say no?”
Evan stared over her head at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling.
He could have lied.
The urge was immediate.
He wanted to tell her no judge in America had enough power to touch what belonged to them. He wanted to build a wall with words and put her safely behind it.
Instead he said, “The judge has to make sure the grown-ups did everything the right way.”
“And if they didn’t?”
“Then we fix it.”
“But you stay?”
His arms tightened.
“I stay.”
The orange popsicle arrived already dripping down Rachel’s hand.
She gave it to Lily and sat on the floor because there was no room left on the bed.
For five minutes none of them discussed adoption, Diane, judges, or the opened envelope.
Lily complained that orange popsicles tasted colder than grape ones.
Evan told her that was scientifically impossible.
She told him he was scientifically wrong.
Rachel rested her head against the mattress and closed her eyes.
It was the first ordinary conversation of the evening, and its ordinariness almost hurt.
After Lily fell asleep, Rachel and Evan went downstairs.
May you like
The kitchen looked different without people in it.
Three coffee mugs remained on the island. Diane’s had a pale lipstick mark on the rim. Tom’s chair was angled away from the table. One adoption page still lay beneath it.
