Chapter 2
Emma stopped talking.
Not dramatically.
Just enough that I noticed.
A few seconds later, Daniel walked in.
He was fifty-two then. Tall, still handsome in the polished, familiar way that had made people tell me for years that I was lucky.
His dark hair had gone mostly gray at the temples.
He was wearing the blue button-down shirt he had worn when he left Saturday evening.
Daniel stopped when he saw us.
His eyes moved from Emma to me.
Then to the kitchen clock.
Then back to me.
“Morning,” he said.
Emma looked at her plate.
“Morning, Dad.”
I lifted my coffee cup slightly.
“Morning.”
That was all.
Daniel stood there.
I knew exactly what he was waiting for.
For almost a year, Sunday mornings had followed a script.
He came in late.
I asked what time he had gotten home.
Sometimes he claimed he had slept in the guest room because he didn’t want to wake me.
Sometimes he said he had stayed at his friend Mark’s after poker.
Sometimes he said somebody from work had needed help.
Sometimes he said I was imagining things.
And sometimes, when his story was especially thin, he got angry before I even finished asking.
“You don’t trust me.”
“Why does everything have to become an interrogation?”
“Claire, I’m fifty-two years old. I’m allowed to have friends.”
“You make coming home feel like walking into a police station.”
The strange thing was that I had believed my questions meant I was fighting for our marriage.
I thought asking was responsible.
I thought caring where my husband slept was part of being married.
I thought if I gathered enough information, eventually I could make the truth line up.
That Sunday, I simply didn’t care enough to try.
Daniel put his keys on the counter.
“You two already ate?”
“There’s more in the skillet,” I said.
He looked at the stove.
Then at me.
“You didn’t wait?”
“No.”
One word.
No edge.
No punishment.
No performance.
Emma shifted slightly in her chair.
Daniel opened the cabinet for a plate.
He closed it again without taking one.
I asked Emma, “What happened after your professor changed the deadline?”
She glanced at her father.
Then back at me.
“He said we could have an extra week, but now everyone’s project depends on everybody else finishing their section.”
“That sounds badly organized.”
“It is.”
Daniel was still standing beside the counter.