Chương 9
He rubbed his face.
“What am I supposed to do with it, Michael?”
“With what?”
“The anger.”
Michael almost said, Not my problem.
Instead he sat in the desk chair.
“I don’t know.”
“I was thirty-two. I had a job. I had an apartment. I was an idiot in some ways, but I wasn’t dangerous.”
“I never said you were.”
“Claire decided for me.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother helped her.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m supposed to enter this like a polite guest.”
Michael stared at him.
“You are a guest.”
Daniel looked offended.
“In my daughter’s life?”
“For now, yes.”
Daniel stood.
Michael stayed seated.
Daniel paced once across the small room.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
“She is biologically my child.”
“And I have packed every school lunch she has eaten since kindergarten because Claire puts too much mayonnaise on sandwiches.”
“That doesn’t erase biology.”
“I’m not asking it to.”
“You act like I’m intruding.”
“You are intruding.”
Daniel stopped.
Michael stood too.
“Not because you’re bad. Not because you don’t deserve something. You are entering a life that existed before you knew it existed. Every step you take changes the floor under everybody already standing there.”
Daniel’s face tightened.
“So what do I do?”
“Stop trying to make up eight years in eight weeks.”
They looked at each other.
Outside, Emma shouted at Walter for eating snow.
Daniel’s shoulders dropped.
“I hate that you’re right.”
Michael looked toward the window.
“I hate it too.”
The room became an office again by the following weekend.
Daniel left one small shelf with three books Emma had chosen herself.
She noticed.
She said nothing.
In March, Emma’s school assigned a family-history project.
Michael discovered it because Emma tore the worksheet in half and hid it under her bed.
He found it while looking for a missing library book.
He sat on the floor holding the pieces.
The assignment was ordinary.
Interview a family member.
Create a simple family tree.
Include one tradition, one inherited trait, and one family story.
Michael closed his eyes.
Emma appeared in the doorway.
“You snooped.”
“I was looking for The Wild Robot.”
“It’s in my backpack.”
“Good system.”
She saw the paper.
Her face hardened.
“I’m not doing it.”
“We can ask your teacher for another assignment.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m doing it wrong.”
He set the pieces on the carpet.
“What’s wrong?”
“My tree.”
“Trees get complicated.”
“Madison only has two parents.”
“A lot of kids don’t.”
“She has one mom and one dad.”
“So?”
“So I have one mom, one dad, and Daniel.”
Michael waited.
Emma sat on the rug across from him.
“Do I put Daniel?”
“If you want.”
“If I don’t, is that lying?”
“No.”
“If I do, are you not my dad?”
“No.”
“What if the teacher thinks that?”
“Your teacher is smarter than that.”
“You don’t know.”
“Fair.”
Emma pulled at a thread in the carpet.
“Can I put two dads?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t call Daniel Dad.”
“You can write Daniel.”
“Then everyone will ask.”
Michael picked up one half of the worksheet.
“Want me to email your teacher?”
“That’s embarrassing.”
“Probably.”
She glared.
He smiled.
“What?”
“You say annoying things.”
“Genetic or learned?”
Emma froze.
Michael did too.
The joke had come out before he could stop it.
He felt sick.
Emma stared at him.
Then she burst out laughing.
Not politely.
Not nervously.
She fell sideways on the carpet.
Michael began laughing too, mostly from relief.
When she stopped, she wiped her eyes.
“That was terrible.”
“I know.”
“Really terrible.”
“Yes.”
“Do it again.”
“No.”
She taped the worksheet back together.
Her family tree had Claire at the top of one side.
Michael on another branch.
Daniel added beside him in smaller handwriting.
Under Daniel she wrote: biological father.
Under Michael she wrote: dad.
When Michael saw it, he went into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet for five minutes.
He told no one.
Not even Claire.
Especially not Daniel.
By April, Claire had started therapy.
Michael started too, after spending two sessions insisting to Emma’s counselor that he personally did not need counseling.
The counselor had raised one eyebrow.
Michael hated that eyebrow.
His therapist was a man named Aaron who wore sneakers with dress pants and did not ask Michael how anything “made him feel” until the third session.
Michael appreciated the delay.
“What would reconciliation require?” Aaron asked one afternoon.
Michael leaned back.
“I don’t know if I want it.”
“I didn’t ask if you did.”
Michael stared at him.
“I hate therapist tricks.”
“That wasn’t a trick.”
“It sounded like one.”
Aaron waited.
Michael rubbed his thumb over the old watermelon scar.
“Trust.”
“What does that mean behaviorally?”
“There. That’s a trick.”
Aaron smiled.
Michael sighed.
“It means I don’t want to wonder whether every story has a hidden basement.”
“Has Claire lied about other major things?”
“Not that I know.”
“Do you believe that sentence?”
Michael looked at the floor.
“Some days.”
“And other days?”
“I mentally audit fourteen years.”
“That sounds tiring.”
“It is.”
“What would staying separated cost?”
Michael thought of the empty kitchen.
Emma’s backpack moving between houses.
Pepper waiting at the door on Claire’s custody nights.
“I miss our stupid life.”
Aaron said nothing.
Michael laughed softly.
“The dishwasher argument.”
“What dishwasher argument?”
“She loads bowls wrong.”
“There’s a correct way?”
“Yes.”
Aaron looked unconvinced.
“See? This is why therapy has limits.”
In May, Margaret invited Michael to lunch.
He almost refused.
Then Emma asked when she could see Grandma again.
Michael chose a restaurant rather than the lodge.
Margaret arrived early.
She wore small gold earrings and a burgundy blouse Michael had seen a hundred times.
He realized it was the same blouse she had worn the night of the slap.
“You own other clothes.”
She looked down.
“Oh.”
She smiled faintly.
“I didn’t think.”
“I know.”
They ordered soup.
Margaret added too much pepper.
May you like
For several minutes they discussed a leaking gutter at the lodge.
Michael knew what she was doing.
