Chương 2
They stopped on Ethan.
“Then tell me, Ethan,” she said. Her voice was low enough that the people walking fifty yards away would not turn. “Which daughter were you planning to erase?”
Maya’s head snapped toward him.
Sophie hugged the teddy bear harder.
Ethan stood too quickly and had to steady himself with one hand against the bench.
“Rachel.”
“No.” She shook her head once. “Not my name. Answer the question.”
“There isn’t an answer to that.”
“There has to be.”
“There isn’t.”
Rachel looked toward the girls.
Her face altered in a small, terrible way.
Maya had begun rubbing the chain of her locket between two fingers, something she did whenever she was frightened and trying not to show it. Sophie had pulled her knees together and tucked the bear’s head beneath her chin.
Rachel closed her eyes for half a second.
When she opened them, the anger was still there, but something maternal had pushed through it.
“Maya,” she said, “come stand with me.”
Maya did not move.
“Sweetheart.”
Maya looked at Sophie.
Then at Ethan.
“Is she really my sister?”
Ethan nodded.
Maya turned to Rachel.
“Did you know?”
The question struck visibly.
“No.”
Maya frowned as if Rachel’s answer created a problem more serious than the first one.
“You know everything.”
Rachel gave a short sound that might have become a laugh in another life.
“Apparently not.”
Ethan flinched.
Rachel noticed.
That seemed to make her angrier.
Sophie slid off the bench.
She was small for six. Leah had worried about that every year after Sophie turned two. Ethan knew because he had received photographs of pediatric growth charts he was not supposed to care about as much as he did.
Sophie stood with the teddy bear pressed to her stomach.
“Should I go?”
All three adults in the situation—though only two were actually present, and the third now existed only in memory—had failed her badly enough that the child believed disappearance might be the polite solution.
Ethan stepped toward her.
“No. Sophie, no.”
She backed up.
He stopped.
Rachel looked at Sophie for a long time.
“What’s your name?”
“Sophie.”
“I’m Rachel.”
Sophie nodded.
“Maya’s mom?”
“Yes.”
The child absorbed that.
Rachel’s eyes dropped to the teddy bear. One of its button eyes had been replaced with a black knot of thread.
“That’s a good bear.”
Sophie looked down at it.
“His name’s Milton.”
Rachel nodded as if they were meeting under circumstances in which discussing stuffed animals was perfectly reasonable.
“Maya has a rabbit named President Carrots.”
Maya groaned despite herself.
“Mom.”
“What? That is his legal name.”
Sophie’s mouth twitched.
The expression vanished almost immediately, but Rachel saw it.
So did Ethan.
For half a second the absurdity of children surviving adult catastrophe by noticing another child’s ridiculous stuffed rabbit loosened the air.
Then Rachel looked at Ethan again.
“Where is her guardian?”
The question had consequences in it.
Ethan heard them.
“Her aunt is coming.”
“Coming where?”
“Here.”
“Who is her aunt?”
“Leah’s sister. Dana.”
“How long have you known Sophie was here?”
He glanced toward Maya.
Rachel followed his eyes.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t look at our daughter to decide which lies you can tell me in front of her.”
Maya’s face changed.
Ethan hated Rachel for the sentence.
Then hated himself because she had earned the right to say it.
“I’m not lying.”
“Excellent. Then answer quickly. How long?”
“Nine days.”
Rachel stared at him.
“Since her mother died?”
“Yes.”
“And before that?”
He said nothing.
Rachel’s shoulders dropped a fraction.
“Oh.”
Maya spoke.
“Dad?”
Nobody answered her.
She tried again.
“Did you know Sophie before?”
Ethan looked at his daughter.
Both of them.
“Yes.”
“How?”
He had come to the park because he had decided the truth could no longer be managed in pieces.
He discovered, standing there, that there was no such thing as giving a child the whole truth. There were only truths appropriate to the amount of childhood you were willing to destroy.
“I knew her mom a long time ago,” he said.
Rachel turned away.
The walking path curved past the huge tree and disappeared behind a stand of oaks. A couple in running clothes jogged by, one of them pushing a stroller. The woman slowed slightly when she noticed the tense group near the bench, then continued.
Rachel watched them until they were gone.
“When?” she asked.
Ethan did not pretend not to understand.
“Seven years ago.”
She did the arithmetic.
Her face went white.
They had been married eight years.
Maya looked between them.
Sophie watched Rachel.
Children understood tone before vocabulary.
Rachel folded her arms.
“So while we were trying to get pregnant.”
Ethan lowered his voice.
“Rachel.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
She nodded several times.
Each nod appeared to hurt.
Maya stood.
“Mom, what does that mean?”
Rachel shut her mouth.
Ethan answered.
“It means I made a very bad decision.”
Rachel laughed once.
This time there was no humor in it.
“A decision.”
He looked at her.
“Please.”
“Oh, I’m being restrained.”
“I know.”
“You don’t get points for noticing.”
Sophie’s gaze moved toward the path.
A woman in jeans and a gray sweater was approaching fast, one hand holding a phone, the other carrying a canvas bag. Her reddish-brown hair had been twisted into a knot that appeared to be falling apart.
Sophie’s entire body loosened.
“Aunt Dana.”
Dana Bennett crossed the final distance without greeting anyone and crouched in front of Sophie.
“You okay?”
Sophie nodded.
Dana checked her face anyway.
“Did you eat?”
Another nod.
“Bathroom?”
“I’m not a baby.”
“I did not ask whether you were a baby. I asked if you needed the bathroom.”
“No.”
“Good.”
Dana stood.
She saw Rachel.
Her eyes went immediately to Ethan.
“You brought your wife.”
“I didn’t.”
Rachel looked at him.
“You didn’t?”
“I followed you.”
May you like
Dana stared at Rachel again.
There was an unmistakable moment in which both women understood that neither had been informed about the other’s presence.
