Chương 14
“I don’t know.”
Claire stared at her hands.
“I’m afraid too.”
Daniel looked at her.
“Of what?”
“That one day you’ll decide you’ve been generous long enough.”
He almost objected to the word generous.
Then he let it pass.
Claire continued.
“That you’ll wake up and realize staying was humiliation.”
Daniel frowned.
“Do you think that?”
“Sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Because I would.”
He stared.
Claire laughed sadly.
“That’s not flattering, is it?”
“No.”
“I told you. I’m not especially noble.”
Daniel leaned back.
There she was.
Not the polished woman he had married.
Not the secret mother.
Not the addict from old court records.
A person he still did not entirely understand.
Maybe nobody ever did.
“I don’t want to stay because I’m generous,” he said.
Claire looked at him.
“I want to stay if staying is the life I choose.”
Her eyes filled.
Daniel pointed at her.
“Don’t make that into a romantic line.”
She laughed through the tears.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were.”
“A little.”
Elaine looked between them.
“You two are exhausting.”
Daniel nodded.
“We pay you well.”
In June, they moved back into the same bedroom.
No ceremony.
Daniel carried his pillow across the hall.
Claire was brushing her teeth.
She looked at the pillow.
Then at him in the mirror.
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
She rinsed her mouth.
“That’s concerning.”
“I’m sure enough.”
“Okay.”
He put the pillow on his side of the bed.
Claire stared at it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have a face.”
“I apparently have several.”
He smiled.
Later, in the dark, they lay with a careful distance between them.
Daniel could hear Claire breathing.
He remembered the first night after the studio, sleeping alone downstairs while she sat in a hotel room a few miles away.
He reached across the space.
His fingers touched hers.
Claire did not grab his hand.
She let it rest there.
In July, Lucas left for Denver.
Claire went to the airport with Mark and Emma.
Daniel did not go.
That was Claire’s relationship to rebuild.
He stayed home and fixed a drawer in the kitchen that had been sticking for six months.
Halfway through, Emma texted him.
He pretended he is not crying.
Daniel replied:
Your father?
Lucas.
A second later:
Also my father.
Daniel smiled.
He finished the drawer.
Claire came home three hours later and stood in the kitchen with red eyes.
“How was it?”
“He hugged me.”
Daniel put down the screwdriver.
“Good.”
“For approximately half a second.”
“Still counts.”
“He told me not to make it weird.”
“That also sounds right.”
Claire noticed the drawer.
“You fixed it.”
“Apparently I am capable of growth.”
She laughed.
Then cried.
Then laughed because she was crying.
Daniel handed her a paper towel because he could not find tissues.
She looked at it.
“Romantic.”
“Use the expensive side.”
She wiped her face.
He kissed her forehead.
One year after the photograph, Maya Reynolds emailed Claire.
The family gallery was scheduled for archival deletion unless she wanted to purchase extended storage.
Claire asked Daniel what she should do.
“Why are you asking me?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s honest.”
She nodded.
Daniel looked at the message.
“Do you want them?”
“Yes.”
“Then keep them.”
Claire hesitated.
“There’s one I want printed.”
Daniel knew which one before she showed him.
Not the photograph that had detonated his marriage.
A later frame.
The four of them on the floor.
Lucas looking at Claire.
Emma mid-laugh.
Mark exhausted.
Claire frightened.
The picture Daniel had once seen only as proof of betrayal now looked like something else.
Not innocence.
Not reconciliation.
A beginning nobody knew how to survive yet.
“Print it,” Daniel said.
Claire ordered an eight-by-ten.
When it arrived, she did not hang it in the living room.
She put it on the bookshelf in her office.
Daniel appreciated that too.
Two months later, Emma came over after school.
She walked into the kitchen carrying college brochures.
“I have a problem.”
Daniel looked up from his laptop.
“Hello to you too.”
“Hi. I have a problem.”
Claire entered behind her.
“She has seventeen problems.”
“Eighteen,” Emma said. “Dad wants me to apply to Colorado.”
“That seems predictable.”
“I don’t want to.”
Claire opened the refrigerator.
“What do you want?”
Emma dropped the brochures onto the table.
“I don’t know.”
Daniel looked at the stack.
Northwestern.
Michigan.
Wisconsin.
Colorado Boulder.
A small liberal arts college in Maine.
“Then congratulations,” he said. “You’re having the authentic college experience.”
Emma glared.
“You’re not helpful.”
“I’m not applying.”
Claire took out milk.
Emma looked at her.
“What do you think?”
Claire stopped.
Daniel watched.
A year earlier, Claire would have been terrified of this question.
Maybe she still was.
“I think,” Claire said slowly, “you should choose a place you can imagine being miserable at.”
Emma frowned.
“That’s terrible.”
“Everywhere will have bad days. Pick somewhere you’d still want to be on one.”
Emma considered.
“That’s actually not awful.”
Daniel nodded.
“High praise.”
Emma threw a brochure at him.
Later, after she left, Daniel found one under the chair.
He picked it up.
Claire was washing glasses.
“She asked your opinion.”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t panic.”
“I panicked internally.”
“Progress.”
Claire smiled.
Daniel placed the brochure on the counter.
“Do you regret it?”
She turned off the water.
“What?”
“Not telling me earlier.”
Claire stared.
“Every day.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
She waited.
“Do you regret meeting them again?”
“No.”
Daniel nodded.
There was the answer he had once feared.
And it did not destroy him.
“Good,” he said.
Claire looked surprised.
He continued.
“If you’d said yes, I think I’d worry you were still trying to make the truth easier for me.”
She dried her hands.
“I love them.”
“I know.”
“And I love you.”
Daniel looked at her.
For most of their marriage, those two truths had been treated as incompatible because Claire believed one threatened the other.
Now they simply existed.
Not comfortably every day.
May you like
But honestly.
“I know that too,” he said.
