Chương 7
“I barely speak to Daniel at all.”
Emma took out her phone.
There were twenty-three unread messages from the birthday group chat and three from Dana asking if she was okay.
Daniel’s thread was lower.
The last message had arrived two days earlier.
Need answer on school pickup. My attorney says we should establish schedule before September.
Emma had replied through the parenting app they were using.
She searched his regular text history for Rebecca.
Nothing.
“Mom,” Noah said.
She looked up.
“I’m going to call Dad.”
Noah sat still.
“Now?”
Emma hated herself for the pause.
“No. Not tonight.”
His face closed.
“I just have something I need to ask him.”
“About Rebecca?”
Every adult in the room looked at Noah.
He rolled his eyes.
“You’re bad at whispering.”
Emma put down the phone.
“That’s fair.”
Noah pushed the truck toward Robert.
“Can you fix it?”
Robert nodded.
“I can try.”
“That means no.”
“It means I am preserving reasonable expectations.”
Noah sighed.
“Grandpa talks weird when he breaks stuff.”
Helen laughed into her hand.
The sound made the room easier to breathe in for several seconds.
Lauren entered from the patio.
Noah looked at her immediately.
She stopped.
Emma saw her sister make the calculation.
Walk toward him and risk making him uncomfortable.
Stay away and seem indifferent.
Apologize and possibly burden him.
Say nothing and look cowardly.
There was no correct move anymore.
Lauren sat on the far end of the sofa.
“Noah?”
He kept watching Robert work.
Lauren folded her hands.
“What I said to you was cruel.”
Noah did not answer.
“It also wasn’t true.”
He pushed the loose wheel across the rug with one finger.
Lauren continued.
“I was angry about something that had nothing to do with you. And I used something private about you because I thought it would hurt your mom.”
Noah looked up.
“Why?”
“Because I was being mean.”
Emma had expected more explanation.
Maybe Noah had too.
He frowned.
“That’s dumb.”
Lauren nodded.
“It was.”
“You broke my picture.”
“I’ll replace the frame.”
“I wanted everyone to write on it.”
Lauren’s eyes closed briefly.
“I know.”
“No. You didn’t write.”
Lauren looked toward the dining room.
The cardboard backing was still intact.
“What did you want me to write?”
Noah shrugged.
“Something only you say.”
Lauren swallowed.
“I don’t think you want that anymore.”
Noah considered her.
“Probably not.”
Emma looked away before Lauren saw her expression.
There was no tidy forgiveness.
Good.
Noah deserved the right not to make the adults feel better.
Lauren stood.
“I’m going home.”
Helen rose.
“Drive carefully.”
It was such a mother thing to say that Lauren almost laughed.
She picked up her purse.
At the front door, Noah called her name.
She turned.
He held the broken frame by the cardboard edge.
“You still have to pay for this.”
Robert coughed into his fist.
Lauren nodded.
“Fair.”
“And not a cheap one.”
“Noah,” Emma said.
“What? She broke it.”
Lauren’s mouth moved.
A small smile.
“I’ll get a good one.”
Noah nodded.
Then he carried the photograph upstairs.
After Lauren left, Emma did not call Daniel.
She wanted to.
Instead she helped Helen box the cake, found Noah’s toothbrush beneath a pile of birthday wrapping, and spent fifteen minutes negotiating whether a seven-year-old who had been emotionally devastated should still have to take a shower.
Noah argued that trauma exempted him from shampoo.
He did not use the word trauma.
He said, “Today was already bad.”
Emma told him bad days still included soap.
He accused her of making things worse.
For several minutes, he was simply seven again.
Emma stood outside the bathroom while he changed because he had recently decided privacy mattered but still feared the upstairs hallway when the house was quiet.
The shower started.
She sat on the edge of the guest-room bed and opened the storage box she kept beneath it.
Inside were adoption papers, court orders, medical records, and eleven letters addressed simply to Baby N.
Emma had not opened them in years.
The first envelope contained a photograph.
Rebecca at nineteen, sitting on the hood of an old blue sedan, holding an infant wrapped in a yellow blanket.
Emma’s son.
Rebecca had dark hair.
Noah had light-brown hair now, though it had been darker when he was born.
Emma turned the picture over.
The handwriting was narrow and slanted.
Please tell him I held him every second they let me.
Emma sat very still.
The shower stopped.
“Mom?”
She put the picture back too quickly.
“What?”
“Where’s my towel?”
“On the hook.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
Emma went to the bathroom.
The towel was on the hook behind the door.
Noah stared at it.
“Oh.”
“Tragic mystery solved.”
He wrapped it around himself.
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I’m calling the newspaper.”
He smiled.
Then he said, “Can I see Rebecca tomorrow?”
Emma’s smile disappeared.
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Can you find her?”
“I can try.”
“Will you?”
Emma looked at him.
For years she had imagined that decision as hers.
It wasn’t anymore.
“Yes.”
Noah nodded.
“Okay.”
He walked into the bedroom trailing water across the floor.
Emma grabbed another towel.
“Feet.”
He stopped.
“What?”
“You’re making the floor wet.”
He looked down.
“So?”
“So I’m not explaining to Grandma that emotional complexity caused water damage.”
Noah frowned.
“What’s complexity?”
“Tonight.”
He thought about that.
“Okay.”
He dried his feet.
At nine forty, after Noah finally slept, Emma went downstairs.
Robert was still awake.
The trust envelope sat in front of him.
Helen had gone to bed with a headache.
Emma made tea she did not want and sat across from her father.
“Why Noah?”
Robert looked tired.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He leaned back.
“You know why.”
“I know pieces.”
Robert rubbed his thumb along the edge of the envelope.
“When Daniel stopped making mortgage payments, I got scared.”
Emma stared at him.
“What?”
Robert looked at her.
May you like
“You didn’t know.”
It was not a question.
