Chương 5
Emma frowned.
“You don’t know?”
“I know there’s a possibility.”
“Grandma said real father.”
“Grandma believes it.”
“Mom?”
Daniel looked toward Claire.
She had gone completely still.
Emma followed his gaze.
“Mom?”
Claire walked closer.
“I think he might be.”
Emma’s face hardened.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“That’s a different word.”
“Yes.”
“Which one?”
Claire opened her mouth, then closed it.
Michael saw the answer before she said it.
“I was afraid he was.”
Emma stared at her.
Michael hated the phrasing.
So did Daniel.
He stood.
“Don’t make me the bad outcome.”
Claire looked at him.
“I didn’t mean—”
“That is exactly what you meant.”
Michael stepped between them.
“Not here.”
Daniel looked at Emma and immediately stepped back.
“Right.”
Emma zipped her coat by herself.
On the drive home she asked for music.
Michael turned on the station she liked.
She asked him to lower it.
Ten minutes later she asked him to turn it up.
Claire sat in the passenger seat with both hands around a paper cup of coffee.
Nobody mentioned the locket, which Emma had placed inside her coat pocket.
Halfway down the mountain, Emma asked, “Did anyone feed Pepper?”
Pepper was their cat.
Claire looked back.
“Mrs. Hanley did yesterday.”
“What about today?”
“She’s going again.”
“Did you tell her half a can, not a whole?”
“Yes.”
“Because Pepper throws up if she eats too much.”
“I told her.”
Emma nodded.
Michael watched the road.
He had spent most of the night imagining that every ordinary thing in his life had been taken from him.
Then his daughter worried about cat vomit.
It steadied him more than anything anyone had said.
At home, Pepper met them in the entryway and yelled as though abandoned for years.
Emma dropped to the floor.
“See? Starving.”
“There’s food in the bowl,” Michael said.
“That’s old.”
“It was placed there this morning.”
Pepper sniffed Michael’s shoe and walked away.
“Traitor,” he muttered.
Emma smiled briefly.
Claire put their bags beside the stairs.
“Can we talk?”
Michael looked at Emma.
She was scratching Pepper’s neck.
“Later.”
Claire nodded.
He unpacked groceries that did not need unpacking.
He put milk into the refrigerator, took it out because it was expired, then stood holding it for several seconds before pouring it down the sink.
Claire watched from the kitchen doorway.
“You’ve checked your phone six times.”
“I’m not checking it.”
“You keep taking it out.”
“Fine.”
Michael set the phone face down on the counter.
There were eleven unread messages from Margaret and four from Daniel.
Claire folded her arms.
“Are you going to tell your office?”
“Tell them what?”
“That you might need time.”
“I have vacation days.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He looked at her.
She had removed her makeup. Without it she looked older, not dramatically, just tired around the mouth.
“When did you decide never to tell me?”
Her arms loosened.
“I didn’t.”
“That’s a ridiculous answer.”
“I decided a hundred times.”
“To tell me?”
“Yes.”
“And then?”
“I didn’t.”
“Why?”
Claire looked toward the family room.
Emma was talking to the cat.
“Because every year made the year before it worse.”
Michael leaned against the counter.
“That is the first thing you’ve said that sounds true.”
She flinched.
“I know.”
“No, Claire. You don’t get to say that automatically.”
“I’m not.”
“You do that.”
“Do what?”
“You agree with the accusation so quickly that I end up comforting you for being self-aware.”
Her mouth opened.
Then she looked away.
“That’s fair.”
Michael laughed.
“There. That.”
She pressed her lips together.
He hated how well they knew each other.
He hated that knowing her did not mean he had known this.
Claire walked to the breakfast table and sat.
“When you came back that spring, you were different.”
“Meaning?”
“You were trying.”
“I was.”
“You were sober.”
“I wasn’t an alcoholic.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You say ‘sober’ like I came out of rehab.”
“You were drinking every night before you left.”
Michael stared at her.
This was an old fight. He could feel the grooves of it before they stepped into them.
“I drank too much for a couple months.”
“Yes.”
“And I stopped.”
“Yes.”
“So Daniel happened because I drank?”
“No.”
“Because that’s where this is going.”
“No.”
Claire’s voice rose, then she lowered it after glancing toward Emma.
“Daniel happened because I was lonely and angry and you told me you weren’t sure you loved me anymore.”
Michael’s jaw tightened.
“I was wrong.”
“I know.”
“Apparently Daniel helped.”
She stared at him.
He regretted it before the words finished leaving his mouth.
Not enough to apologize.
Claire said quietly, “That’s ugly.”
“Yes.”
“So is what I did.”
“Yes.”
They sat with that.
Pepper leaped onto the table.
Michael pointed.
“Down.”
The cat sat.
“Down.”
Pepper blinked.
Claire reached over and lifted him to the floor.
“This is the part I never believed when people talked about disasters,” Michael said.
“What?”
“That the cat still gets on the table.”
Claire looked at him for a moment.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
It lasted less than a second and turned into a sob she covered with one hand.
Michael stood.
He could not stay for that.
“I’m going to shower.”
That evening Emma refused dinner, then ate two bowls of cereal at nine.
Michael slept in the guest room.
Claire did not ask him to reconsider.
The next morning he called the office and said he had a family emergency. His boss asked whether everyone was safe.
Michael looked at Emma sitting cross-legged on the rug, doing math homework she had forgotten to finish before the lodge trip.
“Yes,” he said.
It felt like a lie.
At ten, Daniel called again.
Michael answered in the garage.
“What?”
Daniel was quiet for a beat.
“I don’t know the correct opening sentence.”
“Try one without my daughter’s name.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That works.”
Daniel exhaled.
“I found a lab.”
Michael closed his eyes.
May you like
“Of course you did.”
“They do relationship testing. There’s a standard test and a legally documented one.”
