Chương 4
“Yes.”
“You waited outside Sophie’s preschool.”
Michael's face tightened.
“I wanted to see my daughter.”
“You wanted me to know you could.”
He did not answer.
“That’s different.”
“I know.”
Margaret stood abruptly.
“Stop saying that.”
Michael nodded once.
“You’re right.”
“I don't need you to be reasonable now. You weren’t reasonable then.”
“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
Sophie looked at the photograph.
The little girl on Michael’s shoulders was laughing.
“How did Dad get involved?”
Margaret sat again.
“Daniel worked with Linda’s husband at the time.”
“Uncle Ray?”
“Yes.”
Sophie vaguely remembered Ray, mostly as a mustache attached to Christmas cards. He and Linda had divorced when Sophie was six.
“Daniel helped us move.”
“That’s it?”
“At first.”
Margaret rubbed her thumb over the edge of her wedding ring.
“He knew what Michael had done. Not everything. Enough. When Michael kept showing up, Daniel started staying at Linda’s house some nights.”
Michael looked toward the lake.
“He scared the hell out of me.”
Sophie glanced at him.
“Dad?”
Michael nodded.
“He was six-two and didn’t talk much. Men who don’t talk much are difficult to argue with.”
Despite herself, Sophie almost smiled.
That sounded like Daniel.
He had once ended a forty-minute argument between Sophie and Ethan about whose turn it was to use the car by taking the keys and going grocery shopping.
No speech.
No verdict.
Just absence of car.
The memory arrived so normally that Sophie hated it.
She looked down.
“Did Mom love him then?”
Michael answered before Margaret could.
“No.”
Margaret stared at him.
He shrugged faintly.
“You didn’t.”
“How would you know?”
“You looked at him like he was a fire extinguisher.”
Sophie made a sound that escaped before she could stop it.
Not laughter exactly.
Margaret looked offended.
Then, impossibly, she smiled.
It lasted less than a second.
The room changed with it.
Not softened.
Changed.
Sophie could suddenly imagine them younger.
That was dangerous.
She did not want Michael humanized.
Not yet.
“Daniel offered to marry me,” Margaret said.
Sophie stared.
“Why?”
“Because Michael had filed for custody.”
Michael straightened. “That isn’t why.”
Margaret turned on him.
“You filed.”
“Yes.”
“You threatened to tell the court I was unstable.”
“I was angry.”
“You told your lawyer I was suicidal.”
Michael looked ashamed.
“Were you?” Sophie asked.
Margaret hesitated.
The hesitation mattered.
“I had postpartum depression after you were born.”
Sophie sat very still.
“I was treated. I was working. I was taking care of you. I had never tried to hurt myself or you.”
Michael rubbed both hands over his face.
“I used it.”
Margaret looked at Sophie.
“He used medical information I had told him when I trusted him.”
Sophie felt suddenly sick.
Michael did not protest.
“So Dad married you for custody?”
“No.”
Margaret's voice softened.
“He offered because he thought being married might help me look more stable. Linda told him it was a ridiculous idea. I told him it was insulting.”
“That sounds like you.”
“It was insulting.”
“What did Dad say?”
Margaret's mouth moved at one corner.
“He said, ‘Okay.’”
Sophie could hear him.
“Then what?”
“He came back the next day and fixed Linda’s back steps.”
That was Daniel too.
“And?”
“And nothing. For a while.”
Rain hammered the roof.
The party had disappeared into the main house. Through the rain-blurred windows Sophie could see shapes moving beyond the lawn. Somebody had turned on the porch lights.
Margaret continued more quietly.
“Michael missed a custody hearing.”
Michael looked at her. “My lawyer told me not to go.”
“Why?”
“Because I had been arrested.”
Sophie looked at him.
“For hitting Mom?”
“No.”
“For violating the temporary protection order,” Margaret said.
Michael nodded.
Sophie stood.
She needed distance.
She walked to the table, picked up a glass, realized it contained champagne, and drank it anyway.
It was warm.
She made a face.
Margaret almost said something motherly about drinking on an empty stomach.
Sophie saw the sentence form and die.
That hurt too.
“Where did Dad fit after that?”
Margaret watched the rain.
“He kept showing up.”
“For you?”
“For us.”
“And eventually you loved him.”
“Yes.”
No hesitation.
Michael looked away.
Sophie noticed.
She wished she had not.
“How long?”
“Long enough that when he finally asked me to marry him for real, I made him ask twice.”
“Why?”
“Because the first time he was holding a wrench.”
Sophie laughed.
A real laugh this time.
It shocked her.
Michael smiled faintly and then seemed ashamed of smiling.
Margaret wiped under one eye.
There were no tears there yet.
“Your father was replacing the kitchen faucet,” she said. “He had plumber’s tape stuck to his sleeve.”
Sophie pictured Daniel at thirty: probably already balding slightly, probably annoyed by the faucet, proposing marriage as if remembering an errand.
“What did you say?”
“I told him to finish the sink.”
“That sounds like you too.”
“Yes.”
For several seconds they listened to the storm.
Then Sophie looked at Michael.
“Why did you disappear?”
He took time before answering.
“I didn’t.”
Margaret's posture changed.
Sophie saw it.
“What does that mean?”
“I stopped coming to the house. I stopped following your mother. I obeyed the order after the arrest.”
“That’s not disappearing?”
“I wrote.”
Margaret said, “Michael.”
“How often?”
He looked at Sophie.
“Every birthday.”
Sophie turned to her mother.
Margaret said nothing.
“Every birthday?”
“For a while.”
“How long is a while?”
Michael answered.
“Until you were eighteen.”
The locket felt suddenly hot in Sophie’s hand.
“Where are the letters?”
Margaret stood.
“Sophie.”
“Where are they?”
“I kept some.”
“Some?”
“I destroyed the early ones.”
Michael closed his eyes.
“You told me you would.”
“I told you to stop sending them.”
“And I should have.”
“Where are the ones you kept?” Sophie demanded.
Margaret looked at her daughter.
“In the house.”
Sophie walked toward the door.
Margaret caught her arm.
May you like
Sophie recoiled so sharply that Margaret released her.
For an instant all three of them looked at the place where her hand had been.
