“The only thing I’m going to tell you that’s not obvious, that you don’t already know, is that Dani had a great time with Mikayla.”
I smiled and let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I’m glad.”
“Hold that thought,” said Richard, and turned the car off.
Danielle came running out the front door, her hair wet from a bath. I could feel my heart curl toward her.
“Hey, kiddo,” I said when I got out of the car. “What are you still doing up?”
She hugged me, her arms tight and desperate around my waist, then drew back and gave me a dirty look.
“Waiting for you. Duh.”
“I’m back now.”
Richard brushed past us and into the house. After the front door shut behind him, I leaned down close to her and said, “Me going away with my friends, and Mom and Dad getting mad. You know that had nothing to do with you, right?”
“Yes,” she said. Danielle stared hard at the ground, frowning. “I made Mom a card when she was crying. She said it was the best one she’s ever gotten.”
“She was crying?”
“Well, first she and Daddy got into a fight. Biggest one ever. Then she went into her bathroom and locked the door and I listened through the wall. She doesn’t know I did that.”
“Come inside,” I said and started walking, taking her hand. I thought of Camden’s question: How are we supposed to figure it out if we have nothing real to base it on? But the way Danielle’s hand felt warm and perfect in mine—that was real.
The thought of my mother crying in the bathroom. That was real, too.
When I came into the kitchen, Mom was sitting at the table, facing the other way, and didn’t turn around. I stood watching the back of her head for a few moments as she carefully flipped the page of the newspaper she was reading.
Then Dani said, “Mommy! Didn’t you see that Ari’s home?”
My mother dropped both hands to her side and sat quietly for a moment, then slowly swiveled in my direction.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t prepared for this. I’d played the scene over and over in my head for days now, letting it go one way, then another. Trying out different things to say and a range of reactions to feel. In this little mental theater of mine, Mom was always the same: Angry. Indignant. Unreasonable. (Also, Wrong. Eternally Wrong.)
Problem was, right now she was not any of these things. All I could see in her face was pain, unfiltered and stripped of pretense.
Her pain triggered my pain. There and then and always, for as long as I could remember.
It was different now because I knew I was the cause of it. None of my rehearsed imaginary reactions applied here.
I ran down the hall to my room and slammed the door.
Ten minutes later, Richard rapped softly on my door. I knew he’d just come out of Danielle’s room after reading to her. “She wants you,” he said.
Danielle was already tangled up in her covers, like she’d purposely thrashed around to create the effect. Her still-damp hair spread out on the pillow and I winced to think of how badly it would be knotted in the morning, and how much she’d scream when we tried to brush it.
“Hi, kiddo,” I said, sinking onto the bed next to her.
Dani was staring out the window. “I wrote a note to Jasmine the other day. She took it but she hasn’t answered me yet. Do you think I should write another?”
In my resentment, I’d stopped checking the windowsill for fairy mail every night. Maybe my mother had collected the note, or maybe it had simply fallen between the wall and the bed. I’d have to check in the morning when Dani wasn’t around.
“I guess it depends,” I said. “What did your letter say?”
“I know it’s silly,” whispered Dani, her eyes following something on the ceiling. “But I asked her how to tell when people have stopped being in love with each other.”
The Biggest Fight Ever must have been exactly that.
“What were Mom and Richard fighting about?”
Dani looked at me guiltily.
“I need to know so I can apologize to them,” I lied.
Danielle grabbed two items from her windowsill: a figurine of a fantasy wolf-creature with wings, and some miniature creepy Barbie that had come from a Happy Meal.
She made the wolf speak in a low, deep voice that actually sounded nothing like her father’s: “‘Kate, what’s the big deal? She got a babysitter and prepaid her, for chrissake.’”
“‘But honey,’” said Dani as my mom in a dead-on imitation, “‘she’s never gone against the rules before and it scares me.’”
“‘You can’t control everything.’”
“‘But I’m so busy with my great new job and I have to support us now and I’m so great and me me me! Mememememe!’”
Danielle looked up at me. “Okay, she didn’t say that last part.” She put her toys down. “They have stopped loving each other, haven’t they?”
Who knew. Not us. Probably not them, either.
“I’ll be interested to see what Jasmine has to say on the topic,” I said by way of an answer. “Will you show me her letter, when it comes?”