Chương 3
Daniel looked at Lily.
“Do you?”
Her eyes stayed down.
“Aunt Vanessa said they made the house sad.”
The words landed with almost no sound.
Daniel stood.
He walked into the hallway.
“Dad.”
He stopped.
Lily had not moved.
“Don’t make her mad.”
Daniel turned.
There were many things a father could fail to notice about a child.
A missing sock.
An unsigned school paper.
A lunch barely eaten.
A bad mood explained away by tiredness.
That sentence did not belong on the list.
Daniel went back to her.
He crouched again.
“Lily.”
She looked up.
He had prepared no speech.
Nothing useful arrived.
So he said the only thing he trusted.
“You don’t have to protect me from her being mad.”
Lily blinked.
Daniel almost reached for her, then waited.
She stepped into him first.
He put both arms around her.
The trophy pressed awkwardly between them.
Its tiny metal gymnast dug into Daniel’s chest.
He held on anyway.
Vanessa left twenty-three minutes later with a black suitcase, her handbag, and the expression of someone departing a hotel after discovering the staff had insulted her.
She did not say goodbye to Lily.
That hurt Lily more than Daniel expected.
He could see it in the way she followed Vanessa with her eyes from behind the sofa.
Margaret carried a smaller overnight bag to her car.
At the front door, she paused.
“I should have said something sooner.”
Daniel was too angry to offer comfort.
“Yes.”
Margaret’s face tightened.
He almost softened the word.
He didn’t.
She nodded and went outside.
Daniel locked the door.
Then he stood there with his hand still on the deadbolt.
Behind him, Lily asked, “Is Grandma mad at me?”
He turned.
“No.”
“Is Aunt Vanessa?”
Daniel leaned his back against the door.
“Probably.”
Lily absorbed this with the grave attention children sometimes gave to answers adults wished they could dilute.
“Is she coming back?”
Daniel looked at the hallway.
The guest room still contained most of Vanessa’s clothes.
Her shampoo was still in the bathroom.
Her vitamins were lined up beside the kitchen sink.
A pair of running shoes sat in the mudroom.
Practical reality had not left with the suitcase.
“Not tonight.”
Lily’s mouth tightened.
Daniel added, “And not until I figure out what’s been happening.”
She nodded.
He pushed himself away from the door.
“You hungry?”
Lily shook her head.
“You ate after the meet?”
Another shake.
Daniel opened the refrigerator.
There were sliced strawberries in a glass container, turkey, leftover pasta, three yogurts, and an unlabeled plastic container he suspected belonged to Vanessa.
“How about grilled cheese?”
“No.”
“Cereal?”
“No.”
“Ice cream?”
That earned the smallest glance.
“At four thirty?”
Daniel checked the microwave clock.
“Apparently grief has destroyed my parenting standards.”
Lily almost smiled.
Almost.
He took the ice cream out.
They ate it at the kitchen island.
Lily had vanilla. Daniel had vanilla too because it was the only flavor in the freezer, though he had never understood the point of vanilla ice cream without pie beneath it.
For several minutes, they said nothing.
A lawn mower started somewhere down the street.
Lily swung one foot under the stool.
Daniel looked at the trophy, now resting beside her bowl.
“What happened at the meet?”
She shrugged.
“You won something.”
“Second.”
“In what?”
“Beam.”
“That’s good.”
Another shrug.
Daniel put his spoon down.
“Were you happy?”
Lily stared into her bowl.
“I was.”
“Before you came home?”
She nodded.
He waited.
“Aunt Vanessa said I was being annoying about it.”
“How?”
“I kept talking.”
“You’re eight. You keep talking about literally everything.”
Lily looked at him.
“Yesterday you told me for fourteen minutes why Madison’s water bottle smells weird.”
“It does.”
“I believe you.”
This time she smiled, but it vanished quickly.
Daniel kept his voice casual.
“What did Aunt Vanessa say?”
Lily scraped her spoon across the melting ice cream.
“She said nobody likes people who brag.”
“Were you bragging?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can tell me.”
“I said Coach Rachel said my landing was better.”
“That doesn’t sound terrible.”
“I said it three times.”
Daniel nodded solemnly.
“Three is aggressive.”
Lily looked worried.
He regretted the joke immediately.
“Hey. I’m kidding.”
“Oh.”
“Being excited about something you worked hard for isn’t bad.”
She looked toward the trophy.
“She said Mom made me think I was special.”
Daniel’s spoon stopped halfway to the bowl.
“What?”
Lily’s voice became smaller.
“She said Mom spoiled me because she was sick.”
Daniel set the spoon down.
“When did she say that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Recently?”
Lily nodded.
“How many times has she talked about Mom like that?”
Lily rubbed the heel of one hand against her eye.
“I don’t know.”
Again.
That answer.
Daniel looked away.
Outside the tall windows, a delivery van stopped across the street. A man carried two cardboard boxes to the neighbor’s porch. Somewhere in the normal machinery of Saturday afternoon, people were buying detergent and returning shoes and arguing about dinner.
Daniel sat in his bright kitchen and discovered that his home had contained a separate life he had not seen.
He had noticed Lily becoming quieter over the past year.
He had called it growing up.
He had noticed that she stopped asking to sleep with Emily’s old scarf when she was sick.
He had called it progress.
He had noticed that she no longer brought her mother into conversations with strangers.
He had been relieved, if he was honest, because watching other adults search desperately for the correct expression after an eight-year-old mentioned a dead parent was exhausting.
Maybe he had mistaken silence for healing because silence was easier.
“Dad?”
Daniel looked back.
Lily was watching him carefully.
“What?”
“Are you mad?”
“Yes.”
Her shoulders tightened.
“Not at you.”
She nodded but did not relax.
Daniel changed the subject because he could see she needed him to.
“Do you need a shower?”
“Yes.”
“Badly?”
She looked at the brown smear on her uniform.
May you like
“Probably.”
“That’s encouraging.”
