“You didn’t come before,” she said. When mom was sick, “You didn’t come.” The sentence landed in the room like a stone in still water. Mrs. Calibrizzy made a small sound from the doorway. Victoria didn’t move. Ethan crouched down so he was at eye level with her. Not to minimize the charge, not to escape it, just so she could see his face when he answered. “No,” he said. “I didn’t.
And I need you to know the reason isn’t that I didn’t care. It’s that I didn’t know. Your mom never told me she was sick. and I didn’t know you existed. He paused. I know that probably doesn’t make it feel better. I just don’t want to lie to you. Sophie looked at him. Her expression didn’t change.
Still that flat, careful assessment. Why didn’t she tell you? She said. He didn’t have an answer for that. He wasn’t sure he would ever have an answer for that. He thought about all the reasons Clare might have had. All the complicated math of a woman who had asked a man to choose and watched him choose wrong.
all the pride and hurt and autonomy that might have led her to decide. I can do this myself. I don’t need him. I don’t know, he said honestly. She made a decision. I think she thought she was protecting something, but I don’t know. Sophie absorbed this. Her hand found the indeterminate gray stuffed animal, and she held it without looking at it, the way kids do with things that matter to them. She’s gone, Sophie said.
Yes, Ethan said. She is, and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. The room was very quiet. Are you going to leave, too? Sophie said. He looked at his daughter, this small, serious, unsmiling person who had watched her mother disappear inch by inch over 8 months and had probably been waiting the whole time for someone else to leave.
And he said the only true thing he could say. “No,” he said. I’m not. She held his gaze for another moment. Then she looked at Victoria. Who are you? She said. Victoria, who had been standing very still this entire time, crouched down as Ethan had a mirroring that looked unconscious, unperformed. “My name is Victoria,” she said.
“I’m Ethan’s wife.” Sophie considered this. “Did you know about me before?” “No,” Victoria said. None of us knew about you, but we know about you now. Another long look. Then Sophie glanced around the borrowed room at the cheerful colors that weren’t hers, the unfamiliar furniture, the shoes lined up by someone else’s door, and something crossed her face that Ethan recognized, even though he’d never seen it on this face before.
The expression of a person who has been untethered from everything familiar and is trying very hard not to let that show. “Okay,” Sophie said. just that. Okay. She stood up, still holding the stuffed animal, and walked to where she’d placed a small backpack against the wall, the kind kids take to school with a cartoon character on it that was maybe a cat and maybe a fox.
It was hard to tell. She picked it up and stood there holding it, and the image of her, the small, serious girl with her backpack and her gray animal and her uneven haircut, standing in a room that had never been hers, hit Ethan somewhere specific and deep. “Can we go?” Sophie said. “Yeah,” Ethan said. His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat.
“Yeah, we can go, kid.” The drive back to Dunore was quieter than the drive out. Sophie sat in the back seat. Ethan drove. Victoria was in the passenger seat again, and at some point she turned partway around in her seat and said to Sophie, “Are you hungry?” “We can stop if you want.” Sophie thought about it. “I like French fries,” she said.
They stopped at a diner outside of Junction City. It was the kind of place that had been there forever and would probably be there forever more. vinyl booze, laminated menus, coffee, and thick white mugs. The waitress was a broad-shouldered woman named Donna, who took one look at the three of them, the big quiet man, and the dark-haired woman and the small, serious child, and said, “Well, sit wherever you like, honey,” to Sophie in the tone of a person who understood things without needing them, explained. Sophie ordered French fries
and a chocolate milk. Ethan ordered coffee. Victoria ordered coffee and a piece of pie she didn’t eat. They sat in the booth and the sounds of the diner moved around them. The clatter of plates, someone’s radio, Donna calling an order through the window. And Sophie ate her French fries methodically one at a time and didn’t say anything.
Then she looked up from her plate and said to no one in particular, “Mom said you had a farm.” Ethan looked at her. “She told you about me?” Sophie shrugged, the careful shrug of a child who is not sure how much to give. Some She said you had a farm and you stayed there even when you could have left. A pause. She said it like it was bad.
It might have been bad. Ethan said carefully. I’m not sure I made the right call. Sophie ate another fry. She also said you were good at fixing things. She said she said you could fix anything. He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t tell her about the tractor, which was still sitting broken in the field because the irony felt too large. I try, he said.
Sophie looked at him with those serious eyes. Our apartment faucet was broken for 3 months, she said. It made a dripping sound. Mom said she was going to call someone, but she didn’t. It was such a small thing. Such an ordinary, devastating small thing. a dripping faucet and a mother too sick to call the landlord and a little girl listening to it every night.
