Chapter 4
I showed Sarah’s message to Naomi the next morning.
Naomi read it, then asked me to send her a copy without replying.
“Should I tell Lily?” I asked.
“Not unless there’s a reason she needs to know. Let her speak about her own experience without feeling she has to defend herself.”
I put my phone away. I wanted to shield Lily from every cruel word Sarah had written. I knew I couldn’t hide what had happened at the airport, because Lily had lived through it.
That afternoon, her teacher called. Lily had asked to go to the nurse twice, though she wasn’t sick. She had cried when another child said her family was going on vacation.
I picked her up early.
We drove to the park near Mom’s house and sat on a bench overlooking the swings. Lily held her stuffed fox under one arm.
“Mrs. Cole told me you came to school yesterday,” she said.
“I had to update your pickup list.”
“Is Sarah still on it?”
“No.”
Lily watched a boy climb the ladder to a slide.
“Sarah said I’m difficult.”
“When?”
“Sometimes. Mostly when you were at work.”
I waited.
“If Ben and I both wanted something, she said I made everything a fight. I tried to stop asking for things.”
My chest tightened. I thought about the camera Lily had been afraid to bring on the trip. I thought about all the quiet moments I had mistaken for contentment.
“I wish you had felt you could tell me,” I said.
“I thought you’d be sad.”
“I am sad that you were carrying it alone. You can tell me anything, even when it’s hard to hear.”
She pressed the fox against her chest. “Will you be mad if I miss her?”
“No. You loved her.”
Lily leaned into my side. We stayed until the sun dropped behind the trees.
Later, my mother told me Sarah’s sister had called. Her name was Claire, and she wanted to speak with me about the airport. I called her after Lily went to bed.
Claire sounded uneasy.
“Sarah told me you canceled the trip because Ben got an upgrade and Lily didn’t,” she said. “That didn’t sound like you.”
“She canceled Lily’s ticket and kept it from us.”
Claire was silent.
“She told me Lily was going to your mother’s for a week,” she said at last. “I thought you had agreed.”
“I hadn’t.”
“I’m sorry. If I had known…”
I believed her. Sarah had told pieces of the same story to everyone, counting on us never comparing them.
Claire hesitated. “There’s something else. Last month, Sarah asked if Ben could stay with me during the trip if plans changed. I said yes. I thought she meant work might come up.”
“Why would Ben need to stay with you?”
“I don’t know. She sounded worried about an argument.”
I told Naomi about the call. Naomi said Claire might be useful if Sarah disputed what she had planned, but she urged me to focus on the records we already had.
That evening, Sarah came to Mom’s front door.
I stepped onto the porch before she could ring again. She had a shopping bag in one hand.
“I brought Lily a present,” she said.
“Please leave it with me.”
“I want to give it to her myself.”
“She isn’t ready.”
Sarah looked past my shoulder. “I can see her through the window.”
I turned. Lily stood in the hallway. She vanished toward the kitchen when she saw me looking.
Sarah’s face crumpled. “She’s afraid of me?”
“She’s hurt.”
“I know I did something awful,” Sarah whispered.
It was the first time she had said it plainly.
I wanted to believe she understood. Then she held up the bag.
“It’s the camera she wanted. A better one. Tell her I’m trying.”
“A camera can’t settle this.”
“I didn’t say it could.” Her voice sharpened. “Nothing I do is enough for you now.”
“It’s Lily who gets to decide whether she wants to see you.”
Sarah put the bag on the porch and left.
Inside, Lily asked what Sarah had brought. I told her.
She looked at the bag through the window.
“Can you give it back?”
“Yes.”
“She bought me things before,” Lily said. “Then she’d say I should remember how nice she was.”
I picked up the bag and placed it out of sight. I would return it.
After Lily went upstairs, I checked my email. Naomi had sent the initial separation paperwork for review. I read through it slowly, stopping at the part about the house.
Sarah and I had bought it together, but I had paid most of the down payment with money my first wife, Anna, had left me. I had not thought much about that since we married. Now I needed the records.
I opened our old account statements and found the transfer.
Below it was another transfer I did not recognize. Six months earlier, money had moved from the savings account I used for Lily’s education into the joint account Sarah and I shared.
I opened the account details.
May you like
The transfer had been authorized with my login.
I knew I had never made it.
