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Eventually, he must have slept, because he woke suddenly to the knowledge of someone standing beside the bed. Clark.
“You okay, buddy?”
Clark didn’t answer.
Tony remembered that he wasn’t speaking.
He sat up and reached for his water glass. This could take some time. There had been nights when Clark was a toddler that he’d come to their room, padding on silent feet, and stand there until they figured out what he needed.
Did your Pull-Ups leak? Did your blankets come off? Do you need a song? A story? Was it a bad dream? Tell us what you need, baby.
Clark didn’t like to do that. He liked for them to know.
He punished them for not knowing by making them guess.
Tony swung his legs over the side of the bed and checked the clock. Three-fifteen. Up for the day, then, and he’d only slept about an hour.
This is what it will be like if she doesn’t come back.
Night after night like this.
This is what it will be like forever.
His throat hurt, so he drank the water.
“You want to sit?”
Clark sat.
Tony tried to think what to ask his son, what to say. He wasn’t at the top of his game. That death-knell kept echoing in his head.
This is what it will be like.
The dark was so dark without her.
Clark whispered, “Are you and Mom getting a divorce?”
The question landed in Tony’s lap, and he held the softness of it in his hands, trying to figure out how to shape the right answer.
No, he could say. The answer that would allow Clark, at least, to sleep.
No, what gave you that idea? Of course not. Never.
But he tried not to make promises to his children that he couldn’t keep. He’d already promised Jake that Amber was coming home.
She was. He knew she would.
He just didn’t know if she would stay home.
You don’t get it, Janet had said.
But he did. He did get it.
Ten years of marriage, thirteen years together, three boys who needed them every day, every night—and it all came down to this decision he had to make.
A decision that, now that he stared straight at it, wasn’t really a decision at all.
Janet was right. He was losing Amber. And faced with his worst fear, it didn’t matter what he did. It only mattered that he do something different, because none of the things he was doing now were working.
