Chương 15
Daniel felt something inside him settle.
“You should tell Rebecca.”
“I know.”
“No. Don’t know. Do it.”
Andrew was silent.
Daniel added, “And send me whatever proof you have.”
“I’ll look.”
“Not good enough.”
“I have old tax files in storage.”
“Find them.”
Andrew sighed.
“All right.”
Daniel ended the call.
Claire looked at him.
“You okay?”
“No.”
She nodded.
“What do you need?”
He stared at the carrots.
“Dinner.”
Claire picked up the knife.
“Very emotionally sophisticated.”
“I’m growing.”
Andrew found a copy of the canceled check.
Ten thousand dollars paid to the law office of Thomas Dawson.
Memo line: Hale matter.
Daniel gave it to Marisol.
She said it was evidence.
Not an explanation.
He had finally learned the difference.
Rebecca was furious when Andrew told her.
She called Daniel, breaking his old request not to phone, then apologized immediately.
“I’m sorry. I should have emailed.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, you gave me a boundary.”
“It changed.”
She was silent.
Daniel smiled slightly.
“I’m telling you it changed.”
“All right.”
She breathed.
“Andrew told me.”
“I know.”
“I hate him.”
“That seems fresh.”
She laughed once.
Then cried.
Daniel listened.
He did not try to fix it.
Months earlier, he might have believed being her son required comforting her.
Now he understood he could simply be a person on the other end of the phone.
When she calmed, Rebecca said, “I keep wanting to call your father a monster.”
“Thomas.”
“Yes.”
“He did terrible things.”
“I know.”
“But Andrew helped.”
“Yes.”
“And Leonard helped.”
“Yes.”
“And you made mistakes.”
“Yes.”
“And Mom made mistakes.”
Rebecca was quiet at the word Mom.
Then said, “Yes.”
Daniel looked through the kitchen window.
Margaret was in the backyard arguing with Claire about the basil plant.
Claire had finally admitted it was dying.
Margaret had arrived with a replacement.
Daniel said, “I think that’s why blaming one person didn’t work.”
Rebecca sniffed.
“That sounds annoyingly healthy.”
“Don’t worry. I’m still furious.”
“Good.”
He smiled.
A year after the photograph broke, Claire found it in a drawer.
She had taken it down months earlier while repainting the kitchen and forgotten to return it.
The frame still had the fracture.
The glass was new.
Margaret’s younger face smiled from the hospital bed.
Daniel slept against her chest.
Now Claire knew Rebecca had been standing on the other side of the camera.
She knew Thomas had probably been somewhere nearby.
She knew the envelope had once been hidden behind the photograph because Margaret could not bear to destroy it and could not bear to reveal it.
Claire carried the frame to the kitchen.
Daniel was replacing a cabinet hinge.
“What are you doing?”
“Fixing this.”
“It wasn’t broken.”
“It squeaked.”
“You are becoming your mother.”
He looked horrified.
“Take that back.”
Claire laughed.
She placed the photograph on the island.
Daniel saw it.
His expression changed, though less than it once would have.
“Where’d you find that?”
“Drawer.”
He wiped his hands on a rag.
Claire touched the repaired glass.
“I still feel awful.”
“You should.”
She looked at him.
He smiled.
“Too soon?”
“By about ten years.”
“Sorry.”
She turned the frame over.
The original hospital form and Rebecca’s letter were no longer behind it. They were stored in an archival folder in Daniel’s desk.
“Do you want this back at Margaret’s?”
He considered.
“No.”
“Here?”
Another pause.
“Maybe.”
Claire placed it on a shelf beside a photograph from their wedding.
Daniel stepped back.
“That’s weird.”
“What?”
“Seeing them together.”
“We can move it.”
“No.”
He studied the two images.
In one, Margaret held him when he was three hours old.
In the other, she stood behind him at thirty-three, one hand on his shoulder while Claire laughed at something outside the frame.
Rebecca had attended none of the first thirty-eight years.
Now she called every other Sunday.
Sometimes Daniel answered.
Sometimes he texted that he was busy.
Sometimes they spoke for an hour.
He had met his biological half brother Michael twice.
The first meeting was awkward.
The second involved a baseball game and an argument about parking.
Daniel liked him.
That frightened him less than it once would have.
Andrew remained more difficult.
They spoke occasionally.
Daniel refused to give him absolution just because the older man had finally told the truth.
He also refused to build his life around punishing him.
Margaret remained Margaret.
She overwatered plants.
She forgot passwords.
She sometimes referred to Thomas with affection and then looked guilty for doing so.
Daniel stopped demanding that she hate his father.
Memory did not reorganize itself simply because evidence did.
That had been one of the hardest truths.
Thomas could be the man who falsified, threatened, concealed, and manipulated.
He could also be the father who drove back to an airport for a stuffed bear.
Daniel did not have to make one cancel the other.
Claire touched the repaired frame.
“Do you remember what you asked Margaret that day?”
Daniel tightened the hinge.
“I asked her who told her to lie.”
“Yes.”
He straightened.
“I thought the answer was going to explain everything.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
Claire leaned against the island.
“What did?”
Daniel considered.
Outside, a delivery truck stopped at the neighbor’s house. Somewhere upstairs, the washing machine moved into its spin cycle and began thumping because Claire had overloaded it again.
“Nothing explained everything.”
“That’s disappointing.”
“Very.”
He closed the cabinet door.
The squeak was gone.
Claire looked at the photograph.
“I was so sure I knew what happened.”
“You had one hospital card.”
“And a bad temper.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to enjoy that part.”
“I do a little.”
She nudged him with her hip.
He caught her hand.
There were no marks on her wrist now.
The memory of Margaret grabbing it had become embarrassing in a different way. Claire had apologized to Margaret. Margaret had apologized too. Neither apology erased the act.
It simply stopped them from pretending it had been justified.
Daniel looked at the photograph.
“Rebecca is coming next month.”
“I know.”
“Mom wants to make dinner.”
“I know.”
“She asked whether Rebecca likes mushrooms.”
Claire started laughing.
Daniel smiled.
“What?”
“You hate mushrooms.”
“That’s my point. She has no reason to ask.”
“She’s seventy-three now. She wants data.”
“Rebecca hates them too.”
Claire stared.
Daniel lifted his eyebrows.
“Genetics.”
“That is not how this works.”
“Prove it.”
She laughed again.
Then her expression softened.
The year had not given them a child.
They had stopped treatment.
They had not started an adoption application either.
For once they were allowing an unanswered question to remain unanswered.
They had begun seeing a couples counselor every other Thursday.
Daniel hated the parking.
Claire hated the tissue box positioned exactly between the chairs.
They went anyway.
Their marriage had not emerged from the year stronger in the clean, inspirational way people liked to describe difficult things.
Some weeks it was more fragile.
Some weeks better.
They fought differently.
Claire threw nothing now.
Daniel no longer disappeared into silence for entire evenings and called it thinking.
They had both lost favorite weapons.
It was inconvenient.
Margaret arrived that afternoon carrying the new basil plant.
Claire met her at the door.
“You cannot keep replacing my plants.”
“I can until you learn.”
“I know how to grow basil.”
“The evidence is against you.”
Margaret walked into the kitchen.
She saw the photograph on the shelf.
Stopped.
Daniel watched from beside the cabinet.
Margaret did not touch it.
“You put it up.”
Claire nodded.
“Daniel decided.”
Margaret looked at him.
“Are you sure?”
He shrugged.
“For now.”
She accepted that.
Then she noticed the repaired hinge.
“You used the wrong screw.”
Daniel stared at her.
“No, I didn’t.”
“It’s too long.”
“It’s the screw that came with the hinge.”
“The cabinet is thirty years old.”
“So?”
“So new screws assume thicker material.”
Daniel opened the door.
“It works.”
“For now.”
Claire looked between them.
“I’m leaving.”
Neither listened.
Margaret reached for the screwdriver.
Daniel moved it out of reach.
“Absolutely not.”
“You’ll split the wood.”
“I am an architect.”
“You draw buildings.”
“I understand screws.”
“You hired someone to hang your television.”
“That was because it weighed eighty pounds.”
“You stood next to him while he did it.”
“I was supervising.”
Claire walked toward the living room.
Behind her, Daniel said, “Mom, stop touching it.”
Margaret replied, “Then fix it correctly.”
Claire smiled.
On the shelf, the photograph remained where she had placed it.
Once, she had looked at that image and seen proof of a crime she thought she understood.
Daniel had looked at it and seen a stolen identity.
Margaret had seen the beginning of the life she wanted and the debt attached to it.
Rebecca had seen a promise.
None of those meanings had vanished.
They simply had to occupy the same frame.
A few minutes later, Daniel came into the living room holding a screw.
“She was right.”
Claire looked up from her phone.
“About?”
“The screw.”
“Obviously.”
“I don’t need this from you too.”
He sat beside her.
From the kitchen, Margaret called, “Do you still have the small Phillips screwdriver?”
Daniel closed his eyes.
Claire leaned against him.
He called back, “Second drawer!”
“Which second drawer?”
“The one where it has always been!”
“I don’t live here!”
“You organized that drawer last month!”
There was a pause.
Then Margaret said, “Found it.”
Daniel shook his head.
Claire slipped her fingers through his.
On the kitchen shelf behind them, a young woman held a newborn while another young woman stood beyond the edge of the picture, trusting her to keep him safe until she came back.
The glass was no longer broken.
May you like
The frame still was.
Daniel had chosen to leave it that way.
