Chương 4
“It proves you planned to keep sending him out.”
“It proves I was frustrated.”
“It proves he couldn’t misunderstand what you wanted.”
Claire pressed her lips together.
Daniel said, “What cake?”
It was such a mundane question that all three adults looked at him.
“The anniversary cake,” Claire said.
Richard frowned.
“What anniversary?”
“The museum board dinner.”
“That’s next week.”
“The pastry chef brought a sample.”
Daniel looked at Evan.
“What happened?”
Evan’s face went blank.
Richard said, “Later.”
“No.” Daniel’s voice was still controlled, but something had sharpened inside it. “I keep saying later. I keep finding out that later is where everything gets buried.”
Evan pulled his hands into his sleeves.
Daniel saw it and immediately regretted the tone.
He crouched.
“Not because you’re in trouble.”
Claire exhaled through her nose.
Evan looked at her.
“I wanted a piece.”
Claire said, “You were told no.”
“I know.”
“You put your finger in it.”
“I thought it was the extra frosting.”
“You were told not to touch it.”
Daniel asked, “Then what?”
Evan swallowed.
“I wiped it on my backpack because she yelled.”
Claire laughed once in disbelief.
“You wiped an entire handful across the bag.”
“I got scared.”
“And then you lied.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“After you blamed Lily.”
Daniel looked at Claire. “Who’s Lily?”
“The housekeeper’s daughter. She stopped by to pick up her mother.”
Evan shook his head. “I thought Lily did it first.”
“Did what?”
“Touched the frosting.”
Claire’s voice rose. “Do you see? It is constant. Half-truths, excuses, messes, and then everybody treats him like a wounded animal because his mother died.”
The moment after she said it was so quiet that the low motor of the refrigerator in the catering pantry could be heard from the foyer.
Claire closed her eyes.
When she opened them, she looked at Evan.
“I should not have said that.”
Evan’s mouth had gone tight.
Richard felt something settle in him.
Not rage.
Something worse because it was clearer.
“You’re leaving now.”
Claire looked at Richard.
For a few seconds she seemed to consider arguing again.
Instead, she took the suitcase handle.
“I’ll call Martin in the morning.”
Martin was the attorney who had prepared their prenuptial agreement.
Richard nodded.
“You should.”
Claire’s face flickered with surprise. She had expected the name to frighten him.
Daniel opened the front door.
This time nobody made a speech.
Claire walked through it.
Her heels made four clipped sounds across the stone porch.
At the edge of the light she stopped and turned.
Richard had imagined, on other nights and for other reasons, what he might feel if Claire ever left him. He had expected anger, maybe panic. At sixty-five, marriage was not just love or sex or company. It was medication bottles sharing a cabinet, somebody knowing why the left burner clicked twice before lighting, two toothbrushes leaning toward each other in a cup. It was the person who remembered which cousin he disliked and which doctor he refused to see.
Now he felt all of that existing beside what she had done.
Claire looked at him as though waiting for the old life to pull him toward her.
It did.
Just not far enough.
She walked to her car.
Daniel shut the door.
Richard took Evan to be examined.
The waiting room was nearly empty except for a woman holding a sleeping toddler and a man in paint-stained jeans watching a basketball game with the volume muted on his phone.
Evan sat between Richard and Daniel under a gray blanket a nurse had given him.
He ate three crackers.
Daniel bought apple juice from a machine. Evan said he did not want it, then drank nearly all of it.
Richard filled out paperwork because Daniel stared at the emergency-contact line for almost a minute before realizing the receptionist was waiting.
“You okay?” Richard asked.
Daniel nodded.
Richard looked at him.
Daniel shook his head.
“No.”
It was the first useful thing either man had said to the other since leaving the house.
The evaluation found nothing that required admission. Evan needed warmth, fluids, rest, and watching. A physician asked careful questions about how long he had been outside and whether anyone had hurt him physically.
Evan kept looking at Daniel before answering.
Daniel eventually moved his chair behind him.
“You don’t have to check my face,” he said.
Evan turned.
“What?”
“When they ask you something. You don’t have to look at me first.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Okay.”
Evan looked at the doctor.
“I don’t know how long.”
The doctor nodded. “That’s fine.”
“There were sprinklers.”
“All right.”
“I took my shoes off because my socks made squish sounds.”
The doctor smiled slightly. “I hate that sound.”
Evan considered this.
“Me too.”
For the first time that night, his shoulders dropped.
Daniel stared at the floor.
He had spent the last year telling himself Evan was adjusting.
That word had done a great deal of work in their family.
Adjusting explained the nightmares after Sarah’s death. Adjusting explained the sudden hatred of tomatoes because Sarah had loved tomatoes. Adjusting explained the school nurse calling twice in one month because Evan’s stomach hurt on mornings when his class had family projects.
Adjusting also allowed adults to stop asking questions.
When the doctor stepped out, Richard went to find coffee.
Daniel stayed with Evan.
The boy lay on the narrow examination bed with the blanket pulled to his chin.
“Dad?”
“Yeah?”
“Are we going home?”
Daniel hesitated.
The mansion had been home before Sarah died because Richard and Claire lived there.
Then it had become home after Sarah died because Daniel could not face the smaller house in Newton.
Now Daniel did not know what the word meant.
“Grandpa’s house.”
“Is Claire going to be there?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
Daniel looked at his son.
“I don’t know.”
Evan turned his face toward the wall.
May you like
Daniel sat beside him.
There were answers children wanted because they expected adults to have authority over the future. Daniel used to give those answers automatically.
