I look over at Daniela.
I say, “I know you don’t love the idea, but breaking in is less risky than actually creating a paper trail by renting some place.”
The whole way up from Chicago—six hours—she’s barely spoken.
As if in shock.
She says, “I get it. We’re way past breaking-and-entering at this point anyway, right?”
Opening the door, I step down into a foot of fresh snow.
The cold is sharp.
The air is still.
One of the bedroom windows isn’t latched, so I don’t even have to break glass.
—
We carry the plastic grocery bags up onto the covered porch.
It’s freezing inside.
I hit the lights.
Straight ahead, a staircase ascends into the darkness of the second floor.
Charlie says, “This place is gross.”
It isn’t gross so much as redolent of must and neglect.
A vacation home in the off-season.
We carry our bags into the kitchen and drop them on the counter and wander through the house.
The interior décor straddles the line of cozy and dated.
The appliances are old and white.
The linoleum floor in the kitchen is cracking, and the hardwood floors are scuffed and creaky.
In the living room, a largemouth bass is mounted over the brick hearth, and the walls are covered with fishing lures in frames—at least a hundred of them.
There’s a master bedroom downstairs and two bedrooms on the second floor, one of them crammed tight with triple bunk beds.
We eat Dairy Queen out of greasy paper bags.
The light above us throws a harsh, naked glare on the surface of the kitchen table, but the rest of the house stands dark.
The central heating struggles to warm the interior to a livable temperature.
Charlie looks cold.
Daniela is quiet, distant.
Like she’s caught in a slow free fall into some dark place.
She barely touches her food.
After dinner, Charlie and I bring in armloads of wood from the front porch, and I use our fast-food bags and an old newspaper to get the fire going.
The wood is dry and gray, several seasons old, and it quickly takes the flame.
Soon the walls of the living room are aglow.
Shadows flickering across the ceiling.
We fold down the sleeper sofa for Charlie and pull it close to the hearth.
Daniela goes to prepare our room.
I sit next to Charlie on the end of the mattress, letting the heat from the fire wash over me.
I say, “If you wake up in the night, throw an extra log on the fire. Maybe we can keep it going until morning, warm this place up.”
He kicks off his Chuck Taylors and pulls his arms out of the sleeves of his hoodie. As he crawls under the covers, it hits me that he’s fifteen years old now.
His birthday was October 21.
“Hey,” I say. He looks at me. “Happy birthday.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I missed it.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“How was it?”
“Fine, I guess.”
“What’d you do?”
“We went to the movies and out to dinner. Then I hung out with Joel and Angela.”
“Who’s Angela?”
“Friend.”
“Girlfriend?” He blushes in the firelight. “So I’m dying to know—did you pass your driving test?”
He gives up a small smile. “I am the proud owner of a learner’s permit.”
“That’s great. So did he take you?”
Charlie nods.
Fuck. That hurts.
I pull the sheets and blankets up to Charlie’s shoulders and kiss him on the forehead. It’s been years since I actually tucked my son into bed, and I try to savor the moment, to slow it down. But like all good things, it goes by so fast.
Charlie stares up at me in the firelight, asks, “Are you okay, Dad?”
“No. Not really. But I’m with you guys now. That’s all that matters. This other version of me…you liked him?”
“He’s not my father.”
“I know, but did you—?”
“He’s not my father.”
Rising from the sleeper sofa, I toss another log on the fire and trudge back through the kitchen toward the other end of the house, the hardwood floor cracking under my weight.
It’s almost too cold to be sleeping in this room, but Daniela has stripped the beds upstairs and raided the closets for extra blankets.
The walls are wood-paneled.
A space heater glows in the corner, filling the air with the smell of scorched dust.
A sound is coming from inside the bathroom.
Sobbing.
I knock on the hollow-core door.
“Daniela?”
I hear her catch her breath.
“What?”
“Can I come in?”
She’s quiet for a moment.
Then the lock punches out.
I find Daniela huddled in the corner against an old clawfoot tub, her knees drawn into her chest, eyes red and swollen.
I’ve never seen her like this—physically shaking, breaking right in front of me.
She says, “I can’t. I just…I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“You’re right here in front of me, and I love you so much, but then I think about all those other versions of you, and—”
“They aren’t here, Daniela.”
“They want to be.”