Chương 10
“I think I was a bad father.”
Richard folded the pages.
“You’re trying to turn responsibility into identity.”
Daniel looked at him.
“What?”
“You did bad things. You missed things. You avoided things. That doesn’t require you to become permanently bad so you can feel punished enough.”
Daniel leaned back.
“When did you become a therapist?”
“I didn’t. Therapists charge less than my attorney.”
Daniel laughed despite himself.
Richard smiled briefly.
Then Daniel said, “She’s right.”
“About some of it.”
“She shouldn’t have been the person doing homework and meals every time I had a call.”
“No.”
“She told me she was overwhelmed.”
“Yes.”
“I heard her.”
Richard watched him.
“I just thought her being overwhelmed was less urgent than me being overwhelmed.”
Richard nodded.
Daniel rubbed his face.
“That’s awful.”
“It’s common.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“No.”
Daniel looked toward the window.
“Evan asked if he can see her.”
Richard’s expression changed.
“What did you say?”
“I asked why.”
“And?”
“He says he wants to know if she hates him.”
Richard’s mouth tightened.
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Good?”
“You’re finally saying that before making a decision.”
Daniel almost smiled.
They spoke to a counselor who worked with children and families dealing with grief and conflict. Daniel did not ask for a diagnosis. He wanted help deciding how much contact, if any, would be safe for Evan.
The counselor met Evan separately.
Afterward, she told Daniel something simple.
“Children often want reassurance from the person who frightened them. Wanting contact does not mean the contact is automatically good for them.”
Daniel nodded.
“What do I do?”
“You decide as his parent.”
He hated that answer.
“I was hoping for instructions.”
“I know.”
“What would you do?”
“I’m not his parent.”
Daniel left irritated.
By the time he reached the parking lot, he understood why the irritation felt familiar.
He wanted someone else to own the consequence.
He sat in his car and called Richard.
“I’m not letting him see her yet.”
Richard was quiet.
“Okay.”
“That’s all?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You made a decision.”
Daniel watched a woman struggle to fold a stroller beside an SUV.
“I hate it.”
“Probably means you’re paying attention.”
A month passed.
Claire moved into a rented apartment.
Richard filed for divorce.
The decision came on an ordinary Tuesday after he spent fifteen minutes looking for a pair of reading glasses that were on his head.
He found himself laughing alone in the bedroom.
Then he looked at Claire’s empty side of the closet.
The laughter stopped.
He called Martin.
Not because anger had returned.
Because it had not.
He had been waiting to see what remained after anger.
Love remained.
Habit remained.
Grief remained.
So did the knowledge that if Evan woke frightened at three in the morning, Richard could never again ask himself whether the person sleeping beside him was someone the child needed protection from.
That question made the decision.
The legal process took time.
Claire did not fight to return to the house.
She did argue over property, accounts, and several pieces of art.
Richard found himself irrationally furious about a bronze sculpture he had always hated.
“She can have the damn thing,” Daniel said.
“That isn’t the point.”
“You hate it.”
“I hate losing it.”
Daniel stared at him.
Richard sighed.
“I hear it.”
“You sound seven.”
“I feel seven.”
They let Claire have the sculpture.
Evan started sleeping through the night more often.
Not every night.
Sometimes he came into Daniel’s room without knocking.
Daniel had said he could.
He regretted the policy around two in the morning on a Wednesday when Evan announced that his stomach felt “weird but not throw-up weird.”
Daniel opened one eye.
“Scale of one to ten?”
“What’s ten?”
“Very weird.”
“Four.”
“Bathroom?”
“No.”
“Hunger?”
“Maybe.”
They ate cereal in the kitchen.
Evan sat on the counter because Daniel was too tired to correct him.
Richard wandered in wearing slippers.
“Why are we having breakfast at two seventeen?”
“Medical emergency,” Daniel said.
Evan said, “My stomach’s four weird.”
Richard nodded solemnly.
“Serious.”
Daniel looked at his father.
“Go back to bed.”
Richard opened the refrigerator.
“Is there pie?”
“No.”
“There was pie.”
“Maria took it home.”
Richard seemed personally betrayed.
Evan laughed.
The sound was easy now.
Daniel noticed that too.
One Saturday, Evan found the backpack.
Daniel had washed it twice but could not remove the frosting stain completely. He had bought a new backpack and put the old one in the mudroom closet.
Evan pulled it out.
“Why’d you keep this?”
Daniel looked up from tying his shoe.
“I don’t know.”
“Can I throw it away?”
The question startled him.
“Sure.”
Evan carried it to the trash.
Then stopped.
He opened the front pocket and removed the blue dinosaur.
“You kept him in there.”
Daniel smiled.
“Apparently.”
Evan put the dinosaur in his pocket.
Then dropped the backpack into the bin.
No ceremony.
No speech.
Daniel stared at the closed lid after Evan ran outside.
Richard came through the mudroom carrying gardening gloves.
“What?”
“He threw the backpack away.”
Richard looked at the bin.
“Good.”
“That’s it?”
“What were you expecting?”
Daniel shrugged.
Richard opened the door to the yard.
“People throw away broken things all the time.”
Daniel followed him outside.
The statement stayed with him precisely because his father had not intended it to mean anything.
Spring came slowly.
The hedges where Evan had hidden from the sprinklers turned green again.
For weeks, he avoided that side of the property.
Nobody commented.
One afternoon Daniel found him kneeling near the hedge with a stick, poking at the soil.
Daniel stopped twenty feet away.
“You okay?”
Evan looked annoyed.
“I’m finding worms.”
“Right.”
Daniel turned to leave.
“Dad.”
He stopped.
“You can help.”
They looked for worms.
They found six.
May you like
Evan named one Marcus for reasons he refused to explain.
Daniel got mud on his jeans.
