Chương 10
Nathan said, “Victoria asked if she can see you.”
Grace stopped coloring.
“Do I have to?”
“No.”
“Will she be mad if I don’t?”
“I don’t know.”
Grace gave him a look.
“Again.”
“Yeah.”
She stared at the red crayon in her hand.
“Will you be mad if I do?”
Nathan felt the trap.
Not from Grace.
From himself.
“No.”
“Really?”
He took time before answering.
“I’ll worry.”
“That’s different.”
“Yes.”
Grace turned the crayon slowly.
“I want to ask her something.”
“What?”
She shook her head.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“I know.”
Nathan arranged the supervised visit through a family services center.
He waited in another room.
Forty-two minutes later, Grace came out.
Her face was unreadable.
In the car, Nathan did not ask.
They drove six blocks.
Grace said, “She cried.”
Nathan kept his eyes on traffic.
“How did that make you feel?”
“I don’t know.”
He almost laughed.
Grace did.
“Now you’re me.”
“Apparently.”
She looked out the window.
“I asked if she wanted me to die.”
Nathan’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.
“What did she say?”
“She said no.”
Nathan waited.
Grace continued.
“She said she wanted me to stop making her feel like a bad person.”
The sentence was so adult Nathan knew Grace had remembered it exactly.
“What did you say?”
“I said that’s not the same thing.”
Nathan blinked.
Traffic stopped at a light.
He looked at his daughter.
Grace was picking at the cuff of her hoodie.
“What did you mean?”
“She kept saying she didn’t want me to die.”
“Yes.”
“But I asked why she kicked it.”
Nathan nodded.
“She didn’t answer?”
“She said she was angry.”
The light changed.
Nathan drove.
Grace said, “I don’t want to see her next week.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe later.”
“Okay.”
“She gave me the picture.”
Nathan glanced over.
“What picture?”
Grace pulled something from her coat pocket.
The third photograph from the shelf.
Emily sitting on a beach towel with Grace asleep against her chest.
Nathan nearly missed the next light.
“Where did she get that?”
“She had it.”
Nathan felt anger rise.
Grace immediately added, “She said she took it months ago.”
“Why?”
“She said because Mom looked happy.”
Nathan did not understand.
Grace frowned.
“She said she wanted to know why you were happier before.”
Nathan pulled into a parking lot.
He stopped the car.
Grace looked at him.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
She waited.
Nathan rubbed both hands over his face.
Victoria had lied in Grace’s bedroom.
I didn’t touch the picture.
A small lie.
A pointless lie.
Or perhaps not pointless at all.
The photograph had been evidence of an insecurity Victoria was ashamed to admit.
Nathan looked at it.
Emily was laughing at something outside the frame.
Grace was asleep.
Nathan remembered taking the picture during a miserable beach trip.
Grace had cried half the night.
Emily had gotten food poisoning.
Nathan had lost the car keys in the sand.
The photograph told none of that.
It was one second pretending to be a whole marriage.
Victoria had looked at it and believed the lie.
Nathan had too.
He began laughing.
Grace stared.
“What?”
“That was the worst vacation.”
Grace looked at the photograph.
“Mom looks happy.”
“She was happy for about four minutes.”
Grace frowned.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I lost the car keys.”
Grace laughed.
“Where?”
“In the sand.”
“That’s dumb.”
“It was extremely dumb.”
Nathan looked at Emily’s photographed face.
For years he had protected Grace from the ordinary truth of her mother.
Emily had gotten irritated.
She had sworn when assembling furniture.
She hated folding towels.
She once forgot Nathan’s birthday until four in the afternoon.
She loved Grace fiercely.
She also sometimes sat in the bathroom for ten minutes just to be alone.
She had been a person.
Nathan had turned her into a monument because monuments couldn’t die twice.
That evening, he took out the notebook.
He read it slowly.
Not all at once.
Some entries hurt.
Some annoyed him.
Some made him laugh.
Emily complained that Nathan loaded the dishwasher “like a raccoon.”
He had forgotten that phrase.
One entry from six months before her death described an argument about money.
I told him I feel like the household employee who also has to be emotionally available after five. He told me he feels like an ATM with acid reflux. We were both mean. Then we ordered Thai food.
Nathan laughed so hard Sarah came into the room.
“What?”
He showed her.
Sarah read it.
“Accurate.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Emily’s, apparently.”
Another entry was harder.
I worry that Nate loves being needed more than he loves listening. He solves the version of a problem he can fix. If I say I’m lonely, he cleans the kitchen. If I say I’m scared, he checks the locks. I don’t think he understands that those aren’t always the same thing.
Nathan stopped reading.
Sarah saw his face.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Want to stop?”
He looked toward the ceiling.
Grace was upstairs.
“No.”
He kept reading.
Emily’s criticism hurt because it traveled cleanly across four years.
He had done the same thing with Grace.
She said Victoria moved things.
He explained cleaning.
She seemed anxious.
He offered routines.
She said she didn’t like being alone with Victoria.
Had she?
Nathan searched memory.
Once, before a dentist appointment, Grace had asked if he could pick her up instead of Victoria.
He had said he had a meeting.
She had not argued.
He had solved the schedule instead of hearing the fear.
The notebook did not absolve Victoria.
It accused Nathan differently.
That mattered.
In December, prosecutors charged Victoria with child endangerment.
The exact charge was less severe than Nathan expected.
More severe than Victoria’s attorney had hoped.
There would be hearings.
Negotiations.
Possibly trial.
No immediate moral conclusion arrived with the paperwork.
May you like
Victoria lost her position at a private financial advisory firm after the station video circulated among employees.
Nathan did not post it.
