Chương 10
Ethan stared into the basket.
“You own hotels.”
“Yes.”
“Hotels wash stuff.”
“Yes.”
“Like every day.”
“Yes.”
“And you did this.”
Nathan held up a pink undershirt.
“I don’t personally operate the hotel laundry.”
“That explains a lot.”
Nathan laughed.
It was the first time Ethan had made a joke in weeks.
The sound startled both of them.
Then Ethan laughed too.
Sophie came running into the laundry room because she thought she had missed something important.
Nathan handed her the pink shirt.
“Your brother has a new look.”
She smiled.
Small.
Real.
Nathan leaned against the dryer and closed his eyes for a second.
The next morning Ethan refused to go to school.
No warning.
He came downstairs in sweatpants and sat at the kitchen table.
“Get dressed,” Nathan said.
“No.”
“You have twenty minutes.”
“I’m not going.”
Nathan opened the refrigerator.
They were out of orange juice.
He stared at the empty shelf longer than necessary.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It’s my reason.”
Nathan shut the refrigerator.
“Ethan.”
“No.”
Nathan’s patience snapped.
“You don’t get to decide whether you go to school.”
Ethan stood.
“You didn’t decide anything before.”
The words struck cleanly.
Nathan felt his face harden.
“Do not speak to me like that.”
Ethan laughed in disbelief.
“Why? Vanessa did.”
Nathan went silent.
Sophie stood halfway down the stairs.
Neither of them had noticed her.
Ethan saw her first.
His anger collapsed into shame.
“Soph.”
She went back upstairs.
Nathan rubbed his forehead.
Ethan whispered, “I hate this.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Nathan almost said he did.
Instead he pulled out a chair and sat.
“You’re right.”
Ethan looked suspicious.
“I don’t know what this feels like for you.”
The boy remained standing.
Nathan continued.
“But you’re still going to school.”
Ethan’s mouth opened.
Nathan raised a hand.
“Not because everything’s normal. Because if you stay home, you’re going to sit here angry at me, and I’m going to pretend to work while checking on you every six minutes, and by lunch we’ll both be unbearable.”
Ethan stared.
“That’s your argument?”
“It’s what I have.”
After a long silence, Ethan went upstairs.
He came back dressed.
Nathan drove him to school.
At drop-off Ethan did not get out of the car.
Kids crossed in front of them with backpacks and winter coats. A crossing guard blew a whistle at an SUV blocking the lane.
Nathan waited.
Ethan picked at a loose thread on his sleeve.
“Everyone knows.”
Nathan looked at him.
“About the basement?”
“About Vanessa.”
Somebody had connected the public financial investigation with court filings in the family case. Online articles avoided the children’s names, but parents talked.
“What are they saying?”
“That she kidnapped us.”
Nathan’s jaw tightened.
“What do you say?”
“Nothing.”
“That’s allowed.”
“They ask if she hurt Sophie.”
Nathan looked toward the school entrance.
“What do you want me to do?”
Ethan shrugged.
“Make them stop.”
Nathan could buy companies.
He could move the children to another school.
He could hire consultants.
He could threaten parents with lawyers.
He could not make third graders stop knowing something.
“I can talk to the school.”
“They already had an assembly.”
“About you?”
“No. About privacy.”
“That sounds subtle.”
Ethan smiled despite himself.
Then his face changed again.
“Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Vanessa go to jail because I told?”
Nathan turned fully toward him.
“No.”
“But if I didn’t say anything—”
“No.”
Nathan stopped himself.
He had been about to give the easy answer.
None of this is because of you.
It was true in the moral sense, but children did not live entirely in moral senses.
Ethan had told.
His statement mattered.
Pretending it did not would insult him.
“What you said helped people understand what happened,” Nathan said. “That’s different from causing it.”
Ethan stared at his shoes.
“Would Rosa still be okay if I got you sooner?”
Nathan felt something inside him break quietly.
“You were eight.”
“I’m still eight.”
“I know.”
“You say it like I was eight a long time ago.”
Nathan looked through the windshield.
“Yesterday feels like a long time ago.”
Ethan nodded.
Nathan said, “Rosa got hurt because adults made bad decisions. Vanessa made the biggest one. Rosa made one too when she slapped Vanessa back, and she’ll tell you that herself. I made bad decisions before that when I didn’t listen. You not finding me faster is not one of them.”
Ethan was quiet.
Then: “You made a lot of bad decisions.”
Nathan let out a breath.
“Apparently.”
Ethan opened the door.
Before getting out, he said, “The shirts are still pink.”
Nathan watched him walk toward school.
That afternoon Nathan bought color-safe detergent.
He read the label.
Twice.
Vanessa requested supervised contact with the children in April.
Nathan’s first answer was no.
Laura read the email in his office and said, “That is an emotional answer.”
“It is also my answer.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe.”
Laura set her phone down.
“The court will care about what professionals recommend, what the children want, safety assessments, the pending case, and whether contact can occur without pressure.”
“She locked them in a room.”
“I remember.”
“Why are we discussing this?”
“Because parental and marital relationships do not disappear because you’re furious.”
“She’s not their mother.”
“No. She’s their stepmother, and she helped raise Sophie from the time Sophie was two.”
Nathan looked away.
That was the part he wanted erased.
Vanessa teaching Sophie to swim.
Vanessa sitting on the bathroom floor while Ethan vomited from a stomach virus.
Vanessa making pancakes shaped like letters for Sophie’s birthday.
Vanessa and Nathan laughing quietly in bed when Ethan announced at six in the morning that he had decided to become a professional magician.
None of those moments prevented the basement.
The basement did not retroactively make those moments fictional.
May you like
Nathan despised the complexity.
The children’s therapist recommended that no contact occur unless and until both children expressed interest and a clinical professional believed it could be managed safely.
