Chương 5
Ethan stared at the girls.
“Why didn’t she call me?”
Dana laughed bitterly.
“For what? So you could leave Rachel a fake dentist appointment?”
He said nothing.
“Exactly.”
Dana looked toward Sophie.
“She said something I hated.”
“What?”
“She said maybe she had protected Sophie so hard from your cowardice that she’d protected you from responsibility.”
Ethan pressed his palms together.
The sentence landed because it was true.
“She was going to tell her,” Dana said.
“When?”
“This summer.”
He looked at her sharply.
“She decided?”
“Yes.”
“She never told me.”
“She didn’t owe you advance notice.”
“No.”
“She was going to tell Sophie who you were. Then give you one chance to decide whether you were actually entering her life.”
Ethan watched Sophie kneel beside Maya.
“What did she think I’d choose?”
Dana’s face softened in a way he did not deserve.
“She didn’t know.”
Neither did he.
That was the ugliest answer.
He had always imagined that, confronted with the moment, some buried honorable instinct would emerge automatically.
Instead honor seemed to require decisions made while every available option hurt someone.
His phone buzzed.
Rachel.
Come home after Maya is back with me.
He read it twice.
Then replied:
Okay.
Dana watched his face.
“She ready to talk?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He looked at her.
“That sounded cruel.”
“I’m grieving. My manners have been inconsistent.”
He nodded.
“I noticed.”
This time she did smile, briefly.
Then Maya called, “Dad?”
He stood.
She held something in her palm.
A dead ladybug.
“Can we bury it?”
Dana closed her eyes.
“Of course we can.”
They held a funeral for the ladybug beneath the maple tree.
Maya dug the hole with a stick.
Sophie placed the insect inside.
Neither child seemed to notice the brutality of making adults who had buried Leah four days earlier stand silently through another tiny burial.
Maya folded a leaf over the insect.
Sophie whispered, “Sorry you died.”
Ethan looked away.
Dana did too.
When Rachel returned twenty minutes later, her face had regained the composed blankness she used around people she did not trust.
Maya ran to her.
Rachel hugged her with one arm.
She looked at Sophie.
“Are you going with your aunt?”
“Yes,” Sophie said.
Rachel nodded.
Then, to Ethan, “We’re leaving.”
He glanced at Dana.
“I’ll call tonight.”
Rachel’s eyes sharpened.
“Who?”
“Dana.”
The answer did nothing to reassure her.
Maya hesitated before climbing into Rachel’s car.
She looked back at Sophie.
“Can I see you again?”
Sophie looked at Dana.
Dana’s mouth opened.
Rachel answered first.
“Yes.”
Ethan stared at her.
Rachel ignored him.
Maya smiled.
Sophie gave a small nod.
“Okay.”
The girls did not hug.
They had attempted one before knowing who they were.
After learning, neither seemed certain what sisters were supposed to do.
Rachel drove away with Maya.
Ethan remained beside Dana and Sophie until their ride arrived.
Then he went home.
The house looked offensively unchanged.
A pair of Maya’s sneakers lay in the entryway.
Rachel’s reading glasses rested beside a ceramic bowl filled with keys and coins.
The kitchen smelled faintly of the basil plant Rachel kept killing and replacing because she refused to accept that the north-facing window was wrong for it.
Ethan found the milk on the counter.
He poured it down the sink.
That was what Rachel heard when she came downstairs.
She entered the kitchen in socks and sweatpants, her trench coat gone, her hair loose around her shoulders.
“You’re pouring out milk?”
He looked at the carton.
“It was warm.”
She stared at him.
“I don’t know why that makes me want to throw something.”
He set the carton down.
“Maya?”
“In her room.”
“How is she?”
“She asked whether sisters have to have the same mom.”
Ethan gripped the edge of the sink.
“What did you tell her?”
“The truth. Imagine that.”
He let the insult pass.
Rachel walked to the refrigerator, opened it, stared inside, then closed it without taking anything.
“How long did it last?”
“Eleven weeks.”
She turned.
“You know the exact number.”
“Yes.”
“Was she married?”
“No.”
“Did she know about me?”
“Yes.”
Rachel looked at the floor.
“Of course.”
“She knew I was married. She didn’t know we were trying to have a child until later.”
“That’s the part you think helps?”
“No.”
“Did you love her?”
The question came faster than the others.
Ethan did not answer immediately.
Rachel laughed without humor.
“Oh, that’s interesting.”
“I cared about her.”
“Did you love her?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“It was seven years ago.”
“That apparently hasn’t made you less precise about the eleven weeks.”
He looked away.
Rachel leaned against the counter.
“Were you going to leave me?”
“No.”
“Were you going to tell me?”
He hesitated.
She nodded.
“Right.”
“I wanted to.”
“People who want to tell the truth generally move their mouths.”
“I was afraid.”
“Of losing me?”
“Yes.”
“And when Maya came?”
He closed his eyes.
“That made it harder.”
“No. It made it easier.”
He looked at her.
Rachel’s voice became quieter.
“You had something to protect. So you protected us. Not her.”
“That’s not how it felt.”
“I don’t care how it felt.”
He absorbed that.
She folded her arms.
“Did you pay child support?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“An account through an attorney.”
“How much?”
He told her.
Rachel blinked.
The number was substantial.
Not ruinous.
But enough that it should have existed inside their marriage.
“From what money?”
“My distributions.”
“Our money.”
“Yes.”
“You hid six years of financial transfers from me.”
“Yes.”
“Do you understand that is not a separate lie?”
“I do now.”
She laughed again.
“Of course you do now.”
“I’m not trying to minimize it.”
“You keep saying the correct sentence after every terrible fact.”
He stopped.
That was true too.
Rachel walked out of the kitchen.
He followed her to the dining room but kept several feet between them.
May you like
She stood beside the table where Maya did homework.
A construction-paper solar system still lay beneath a stack of mail.
