Chương 2
Lily tightened around her.
“Where are you going?” Daniel asked.
“Nowhere with you.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Richard stepped between them.
Walter said, “Daniel, sit down.”
Daniel looked at him with such open contempt that Walter recoiled.
Claire had never seen that look pass between them.
Not once.
Family mythology had always placed Walter and Daniel on the same side. Walter had coached Daniel’s Little League team, paid part of his college tuition, given the toast at their wedding, loaned them money for their first house even though Daniel had insisted publicly that they had not needed it. Walter defended his son with the easy reflex of a man who believed loyalty was a form of morality.
Now Walter looked afraid of him.
“Mom,” Lily said.
Claire looked down.
“I want to go home.”
The absurdity of the request nearly broke her.
They were home.
The dinner was at Claire and Daniel’s house.
Richard had driven in from Alexandria. Walter lived twenty minutes away. Half the people at the table had left coats in Claire’s front closet. The lemon cake cooling in the kitchen was from a bakery three neighborhoods over because Claire had burned the first one while answering work emails and had lied about it because her aunt still treated store-bought dessert as a character defect.
But Lily had said she wanted to go home.
And Claire understood exactly what she meant.
“Okay,” Claire said. “We’re leaving.”
Daniel laughed again, softer this time. “Where exactly?”
She looked at him.
He seemed to hear the mistake after he made it.
Richard did too.
“That sounded a lot like you thought you had a vote,” Richard said.
“Dad, please.” Claire hated the old habit of calling him that in moments when she felt sixteen. “Not now.”
Richard’s expression changed. He stepped aside.
Claire carried Lily toward the foyer.
Daniel followed.
“Claire.”
She kept walking.
“Claire.”
Richard blocked him again.
“Move.”
“No.”
“This is my house.”
Richard glanced around. “That may become an interesting legal discussion. Tonight, it’s irrelevant.”
Walter rose again. “Daniel, don’t.”
“Would everyone stop telling me what to do?”
The sudden volume made Lily flinch.
Daniel noticed.
His face changed instantly.
That was almost worse.
He softened his voice. “Sweetheart, Daddy’s not mad at you.”
Lily put both hands over her ears.
Claire felt something inside herself become very still.
For months she had been telling herself that she was tired.
Not sick. Not frightened. Not confused.
Tired.
The word had been useful because tiredness had no villain.
She had woken some mornings with no memory of going upstairs. Twice she had found text messages she did not remember sending. Once, after a school fundraiser, she had discovered a bruise along her hip and assumed she had hit the bathroom counter in the dark.
Daniel had teased her about becoming a lightweight.
She had laughed.
Her doctor had ordered bloodwork in April. Normal.
Daniel had said stress did strange things.
She had agreed.
He had started making her tea in the evenings around February.
That thought arrived so quietly she almost walked past it.
Claire stopped near the staircase.
Daniel saw her face.
“What?”
She turned.
“When did you start making my tea?”
His eyes narrowed.
Richard said nothing.
Walter lowered his head.
Daniel slipped his hands into his trouser pockets. “What are you talking about?”
“You hate tea.”
“Claire.”
“You make fun of tea.”
“This is ridiculous.”
“You call it leaf water.”
Megan made a tiny involuntary sound from the dining room and covered her mouth. It was not laughter, exactly. It was the sound people made when familiar trivia suddenly became evidence.
Claire remembered February. Daniel appearing in the kitchen with a mug and saying she looked exhausted. March, when she had fallen asleep during a movie and woken in bed with one contact lens still in. April, when she missed the alarm for Lily’s field trip and Daniel told the school office Claire was ill. May, when she woke at two in the morning sitting on the closed toilet lid with no idea why she was there.
Small humiliations.
Domestic things.
Nothing she had thought worthy of fear.
“Claire,” Daniel said carefully, “you’ve been under tremendous stress.”
She looked at Lily.
Her daughter’s face was pressed into her shoulder again.
“How did she know?”
Daniel exhaled through his nose. “She doesn’t.”
“How did she know you put something in my tea?”
“She saw me take vitamins.”
“Into my tea?”
“I don’t know what she saw.”
Lily spoke without turning around.
“You crushed them with the spoon.”
Walter made a noise.
It was low, almost a cough.
Claire looked at him.
Richard did too.
Walter rubbed both hands down his thighs.
“Walter,” Richard said.
“Not in front of Lily.”
Claire stared at him.
“No. You don’t get to decide that now.”
“I’m not trying to—”
“What do you know?”
Walter’s lips moved before sound came.
“I knew some pills were missing.”
Daniel said, “Dad.”
Walter flinched.
Richard picked up the medicine bottle and slipped it into the inside pocket of his suit coat.
Daniel saw.
“You can’t take that.”
Richard buttoned his jacket.
“Watch me.”
“It’s prescription medication with my father’s name on it.”
“Then I’m sure he’ll be eager to explain why his son was trying to grab it from a seven-year-old.”
Walter said, “I gave Daniel a few months ago.”
Silence returned.
Claire shifted Lily higher on her hip.
“How many?”
“Two. Maybe three.”
“For what?”
Walter looked miserable. “He said you weren’t sleeping.”
Daniel stepped toward him. “Stop talking.”
Richard moved between them.
Walter’s voice cracked. “He said she was having panic attacks at night.”
Claire almost smiled.
Not because anything was funny.
Because her mind rejected the idea so completely that her face had nowhere else to go.
“I’ve never had a panic attack.”
Walter looked at her for the first time.
“I know that now.”
“You’ve known me fourteen years.”
May you like
“I didn’t—I thought maybe you didn’t want people knowing.”
“So you gave him your sleeping pills?”
