Chương 8
Favorite food: tacos.
Favorite color: green, which Emma accused him of proving with his sweater.
Job: civil engineer, which required a ten-minute explanation and ended with Emma saying, “So you do road math.”
Daniel accepted the title.
Worst food: raisins.
Emma stopped walking.
“You hate raisins?”
“Yes.”
“I hate raisins.”
Michael’s stomach tightened.
It was ridiculous.
Millions of people hated raisins.
Daniel looked at Michael and saw it anyway.
He changed the subject.
“What does Pepper hate?”
“Everyone,” Emma said.
The moment passed.
Later, in the kitchen, Daniel stood beside Michael while Emma took Walter into the backyard.
“I’m sorry.”
“For raisins?”
“For looking happy.”
Michael rinsed a mug.
“You’re allowed to be happy.”
“I don’t think you mean that.”
“I’m trying to.”
Daniel leaned against the counter.
“I don’t know where to stand in this.”
“Join the club.”
“She calls you Dad.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not asking her to call me anything.”
“Good.”
“But when she does…”
Michael waited.
Daniel swallowed.
“It hurts more than I expected.”
Michael turned off the faucet.
“Be careful who you say that to.”
“I’m saying it to you.”
“Exactly.”
Daniel looked at him.
Michael dried his hands.
“You think I don’t know this hurts you. I do. But there is a version of this where every adult starts handing Emma their pain like it’s her job to distribute fairness.”
Daniel looked through the window.
Emma was kneeling in the snow while Walter sniffed a shrub.
“I don’t want that.”
“Then don’t.”
Daniel nodded.
Michael hated how easy it was to respect him when he behaved well.
It would have been simpler if Daniel were cruel.
Claire moved into a furnished apartment three weeks later.
Not because Michael told her to leave.
Because neither of them could continue sleeping in separate rooms while pretending every breakfast was temporary.
Emma hated the apartment.
“It smells like hotel.”
“It’s new carpet,” Claire said.
“That’s worse.”
Her bedroom contained a white bed, a pink desk, and two unopened boxes of clothes.
Claire had tried too hard.
Emma recognized it immediately.
“Why is everything pink?”
“You like pink.”
“When I was six.”
Claire sat on the edge of the bed.
“I can return it.”
“All of it?”
“If you want.”
Emma looked at her.
“Are you coming home?”
Claire’s face changed.
“I don’t know.”
“Dad knows.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He always knows stuff before you.”
Claire flinched.
Emma opened one of the boxes.
“Except Daniel.”
That night Claire called Michael after Emma had fallen asleep.
“She hates me.”
Michael sat at his kitchen table eating cereal directly from the box.
“She’s angry.”
“She barely talks to me.”
“She talks when she’s ready.”
“She asked if I was coming home.”
Michael stared at the cereal.
“What did you say?”
“That I didn’t know.”
“Good.”
“You would have said that?”
“Yes.”
Claire was quiet.
“Do you miss me?”
Michael closed the cereal box.
“This is not a safe question.”
“I know.”
“Then why ask?”
“Because I miss you.”
He looked at the empty chair across from him.
“I miss parts of you.”
She inhaled sharply.
“I don’t know whether that’s better or worse.”
“It’s just true.”
“Do you hate me?”
“Sometimes.”
Another silence.
“Do you love me?”
Michael stood and put the cereal away.
“Also sometimes.”
Claire cried quietly.
He did not comfort her.
But he stayed on the phone.
Margaret did not see Emma for six weeks.
Michael made that decision after Emma asked whether Grandma would reveal another secret if she went to her house.
Margaret did not fight him.
She sent cards.
Not gifts.
Michael noticed the restraint.
The first card contained four sentences.
Dear Emma,
I did something that frightened you. I believed telling the truth gave me permission to choose the time and place. It did not. I am sorry.
Love,
Grandma
Emma read it twice.
Then she put it in a drawer.
Two weeks later Margaret sent another.
No apology this time.
She wrote that the bird feeder outside the lodge had been destroyed by a raccoon and asked whether Emma thought raccoons could be rehabilitated.
Emma laughed.
She wrote back:
Probably not.
Michael mailed it.
He did not tell Margaret the answer had taken Emma twenty minutes.
In February, Daniel made his first major mistake.
He had been careful for months.
Too careful, perhaps.
Emma had begun spending occasional afternoons with him after school, usually with Michael nearby at first, then eventually with Claire or Renee handling pickups.
Daniel never called himself her father.
He never pushed sleepovers.
He never showed up without asking.
Then he bought her a room.
Not literally.
He converted his home office into a bedroom.
He painted one wall pale yellow because Emma had once said yellow was better than pink.
He bought books, a desk, new bedding, and a lamp shaped like a crescent moon.
He told himself it was preparation.
When Emma came to his house and opened the door, she stared.
Daniel smiled nervously.
“I thought you might want your own space here.”
Emma stepped backward.
Michael watched from the hallway.
The reaction was instant.
“I don’t live here.”
Daniel’s smile disappeared.
“I know.”
“Why did you do this?”
“For when you visit.”
“I visit for like three hours.”
“I thought maybe eventually—”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“I don’t want a bedroom.”
“That’s okay.”
“Then why is there one?”
“I can change it back.”
“Do that.”
She walked past him and went straight outside.
Walter followed.
Daniel stood in the yellow room.
Michael leaned against the doorframe.
Daniel stared at the moon lamp.
“I screwed up.”
“Yes.”
“I thought it would make her feel included.”
“You made a future without asking her.”
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed.
“I got excited.”
“I know.”
“I lost eight years.”
Michael’s jaw tightened.
“There it is.”
Daniel looked up.
“What?”
“The sentence.”
“What sentence?”
“The one where missing eight years becomes a coupon for rushing the ninth.”
Daniel looked away.
May you like
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It is a little.”
