Chương 10
Dana wore practical shoes and carried a thin laptop. She explained that she needed to speak with Daniel and Emma separately.
Daniel disliked that immediately.
He allowed it anyway.
Leah took Murphy into the backyard because he would not stop trying to put his head in Dana’s lap.
Daniel waited in the kitchen while Emma talked in the living room.
He could hear voices but not words.
He washed Leah’s clean dishes until she took a plate out of his hand.
“They’re already clean.”
“I know.”
“You’re washing a clean plate.”
“I know.”
“Sit down.”
He sat.
Forty minutes later, Dana asked to speak with him.
She did not tell him everything Emma had said.
Daniel respected and hated that.
She asked about the history of the household.
Rachel.
Vanessa.
Emma’s therapy.
Work travel.
Discipline.
Daniel answered.
When Dana asked whether he had ever seen Vanessa intimidate Emma before, Daniel initially said no.
Then he remembered a dinner in February.
Emma refused green beans.
Vanessa had stood beside her chair and said, We can sit here all night.
At the time Daniel had supported her.
Five minutes later, when Vanessa went to the restroom, he had slipped Emma a cookie under the table.
He had treated the situation like a harmless parental disagreement.
He told Dana.
“Anything else?”
There were smaller memories now.
Vanessa taking away Emma’s bedroom door for one afternoon after she slammed it.
Daniel had made her put it back when he came home.
Vanessa insisting Emma apologize before getting dinner after Emma called her mean.
Daniel had told Vanessa privately that food could not be punishment.
Neither incident had seemed like the beginning of anything.
Together they looked different.
Or maybe Daniel was forcing them to.
He said that aloud.
Dana nodded.
“That uncertainty is normal when you’re reviewing a relationship after something serious.”
“What happens now?”
“We still have information to gather.”
“Is Emma staying with me?”
“You’re her legal parent, and based on what I know right now, there’s no reason she shouldn’t.”
“Can I take her home?”
“To the same home as Ms. Cole?”
“No.”
Dana considered.
“If Ms. Cole is not there, that is different. I would recommend avoiding unsupervised contact between Emma and Ms. Cole while this is being assessed.”
“Recommend.”
“Yes.”
“You can’t order it.”
“Not based on this conversation alone.”
Daniel appreciated the precision.
He also found it maddening.
“What about the belt?”
“It matters.”
“The video?”
“It matters.”
“But?”
“But my job tonight is not to deliver a final judgment.”
Dana folded her hands.
“Mr. Cole, one thing that often makes these situations harder is that families want certainty immediately. They want someone to say this person is safe, that person is dangerous, this happened, that didn’t. Sometimes the evidence is clear. Sometimes it takes time.”
Daniel looked toward the living room.
“I don’t have time if my daughter’s scared.”
“You have enough information to make a safety decision tonight.”
He nodded.
That he could do.
Vanessa left the house the next morning.
Not because Daniel ordered her to.
Her attorney advised it.
She texted Daniel that she would stay with Caroline temporarily and asked for a scheduled time to collect clothes and medication.
Daniel arranged to be gone while Leah met her.
Vanessa did not take much.
Three suitcases.
Two garment bags.
A box of toiletries.
Her espresso machine.
Leah found that last item personally offensive.
“She took the coffee machine?”
“It was hers before we married.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
“I don’t know. I’m angry.”
Daniel looked at the empty space on the counter.
“So am I.”
Emma came home that afternoon.
She stood inside the front door for a long time.
Nothing in the house looked damaged.
That seemed to make her more cautious.
“Is she here?”
“No.”
“Where is she?”
“With Aunt Caroline.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
Emma looked toward the stairs.
Then she took off her shoes.
Daniel almost laughed.
For once, she had remembered.
She went into the kitchen.
The broken plate had been removed.
Daniel had thrown it away.
His mother’s bowl remained in the box.
He had not been able to decide what to do with it.
Emma approached.
“Can you fix it?”
“I don’t know.”
“With glue?”
“Maybe some of it.”
She touched one blue-painted shard.
“Grandma liked this?”
“Yeah.”
“Did I know her?”
“You were a baby.”
Emma nodded.
Then she said, “Vanessa said you’d be really mad when you saw it.”
“I was.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“Before you knew?”
Daniel hesitated.
“Yes.”
Emma looked up.
He did not lie.
“When I first saw it, I thought you might have broken it.”
Her face closed.
Daniel continued.
“I was wrong.”
“You believed her.”
“For a minute.”
“You always believe her.”
There was no accusation in her tone.
That made it worse.
“Not always.”
Emma gave him a look so much like Rachel that for a second his mind stopped.
Not the face.
The look.
The quiet skepticism.
He sat at the island.
“Okay. Too often.”
Emma leaned against the cabinet.
“Why?”
Because Vanessa was an adult.
Because adulthood came with automatic credibility Daniel had never noticed granting.
Because Vanessa spoke in complete sentences while Emma shrugged and cried and forgot details.
Because believing Vanessa allowed him to keep going to work.
Because every problem Vanessa solved was one less thing requiring him to admit he had no idea how to build a family after Rachel.
He could not give a seven-year-old all of that.
“Because I made mistakes.”
Emma picked at her thumbnail.
“Are you getting divorced?”
Daniel looked at her.
“Did someone say that?”
“No.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“Lily’s parents got divorced and her dad got an apartment with no chairs.”
Daniel blinked.
“No chairs?”
“For a while.”
“What did he sit on?”
“A beanbag.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“She liked it.”
Daniel rubbed his forehead.
May you like
“I don’t know what will happen with me and Vanessa.”
“Would she live here?”
