Chương 4
“I know.”
Claire stared at him.
“You keep saying that.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to tell me whether tonight surprised you.”
Daniel did not answer.
That was the answer.
Claire looked forward again.
Cars passed beneath the highway lights.
“You knew.”
“No.”
“You knew enough.”
“I knew she could be difficult.”
“Difficult is sending the steak back three times.”
“I didn’t know she would do that.”
“But you knew enough that when she said, ‘Ask him what he touched,’ you questioned Ethan.”
Daniel flinched.
“I was trying to understand what happened.”
“You believed her for a second.”
“I asked our son a question.”
“Because she planted doubt.”
“I had just walked in.”
“And I was standing there.”
“I didn’t say you were lying.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He exhaled hard.
“Claire.”
“No. I need you to hear this. I watched you walk into a room where your six-year-old was on the floor crying, and somehow your mother got three words out and suddenly Ethan had to prove he hadn’t earned it.”
“She said he touched something.”
“And?”
“And I wanted to know what.”
“Why?”
Daniel opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
Claire’s voice became quieter.
“That is what scares me.”
They did not speak again until they reached their house in Coral Gables.
Ethan stayed asleep while Daniel carried him upstairs.
His son felt heavier than he had a month before. Daniel thought about how quickly children changed size without permission. Last year Ethan’s feet had barely reached the edge of his booster seat. Now one white sneaker knocked lightly against Daniel’s thigh as he climbed the stairs.
He changed Ethan into pajamas without fully waking him.
When Daniel pulled off the beige shorts, he saw the bruise beginning along the outside of Ethan’s hip.
Purple already.
He stood there with one hand holding the waistband of the pajamas.
Claire appeared in the doorway.
She saw it too.
Neither spoke.
Daniel finished dressing him.
Ethan rolled toward the wall and tucked one hand beneath his cheek.
On the nightstand sat a plastic dinosaur, two pennies, a library book about sharks, and a crumpled receipt from an ice cream shop.
Claire picked up the shark book and moved it so it would not fall.
Then she walked out.
Daniel followed.
In their bedroom Claire removed her earrings.
Usually she dropped them into a shallow ceramic dish. Tonight the first one missed and rolled beneath the dresser.
She stared at where it had disappeared.
Then she sat on the edge of the bed.
Daniel leaned against the doorframe.
“I’m sorry.”
Claire nodded once.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“That doesn’t sound like you believe me.”
“I believe you’re sorry.”
Daniel rubbed his face.
Claire looked at him.
“I don’t know if I trust your instincts around her.”
He lowered his hands.
“That’s fair.”
She seemed surprised by the answer.
He was surprised too.
Claire removed the other earring and held it.
“Did she do that to you?”
Daniel looked toward the hallway.
“Pull my chair out?”
“Anything like it.”
He sat in the chair near the window.
The room was dark except for Claire’s bedside lamp.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It is.”
“How?”
He gave a humorless smile.
“You’d be amazed what becomes normal if it starts early enough.”
Claire said nothing.
Daniel looked down at his hands.
“She slapped me a few times.”
Claire stopped moving.
“Daniel.”
“It was the eighties.”
“That sentence does not make this better.”
“I know.”
“Why have you never told me?”
“Because I don’t walk around thinking about it.”
“You’re thinking about it now.”
“Yes.”
She waited.
He hated being waited out.
Margaret used silence as a weapon. Claire used it because she actually wanted to hear the answer.
Daniel rubbed his thumb over the side of his index finger.
“She didn’t hit constantly. That wasn’t really her thing.”
“What was her thing?”
He looked at the floor.
“Making you unsure.”
Claire’s face changed.
Daniel continued.
“If she screamed, you could say she screamed. If she hit you hard enough to leave a mark, someone else could see it. She was better than that.”
“Better?”
“More careful.”
Claire lowered the earring into the dish.
“There was always a reason. If she grabbed your arm, it was because you were about to break something. If she shoved you into a room, it was because you were hysterical and needed to calm down. If she humiliated you in front of people, it was because she was correcting your manners.”
He paused.
“She could make the thing she did disappear behind the thing you supposedly did first.”
Claire stared at him.
“Ask him what he touched.”
Daniel looked up.
“Yes.”
She inhaled slowly.
“That wasn’t new.”
“No.”
“Jesus.”
“I had forgotten.”
“No, you hadn’t.”
He almost argued.
Then he stopped.
Claire leaned back against the headboard.
“You didn’t remember the event. Your body remembered the rule.”
Daniel looked away.
He did not like the sentence.
That probably meant it was close to true.
At two in the morning, Ethan woke screaming.
Not loudly.
That would have been easier.
He called, “Dad,” in a terrified whisper from down the hall.
Daniel reached him first.
Ethan was sitting upright, sheets gathered in both fists.
“What happened?”
“The boat.”
“What about it?”
“I dropped it.”
“You’re home.”
Ethan looked around the room.
His breathing slowed.
“Grandma said—”
“I know.”
“Can she come here?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
Ethan stared at him.
“No?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Daniel climbed onto the bed and sat beside him.
Ethan leaned against his chest.
After a while he said, “Grandma has a key.”
Daniel looked toward the bedroom door.
Claire was standing there.
May you like
He had forgotten about the key.
Not an actual house key anymore. Their locks had been changed two years earlier after a renovation. Margaret had never been given the new code because she hated electronic locks and complained that “homes shouldn’t require software.”
