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His teeth sink into his lower lip. “I handled it poorly. I’m trying to make sure I don’t cross a line.”
I swallow. He said he would try…Did he not understand that me and the kids are a package deal? “Caleb, you’ve beensitting with us on the beach for months now. We’ve had dinner with you, we’ve gone on your boat—how would coming down to sayhibe crossing a line?”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “I just don’t...I want to make sure I’m not something they start to count on.”
Ouch.
I step outside and sink into the chaise, arms wrapped around myself. “When we started this, you said you wanted to try. I assumed that included them.”
He sits beside me. “It did. It does. I don’t know what happened today. I saw them and I…” He shrugs. “Can I ease into it?”
I want this for myself. I want this for the twins. I want it for him too, because I think he’s still messed up by what happened to his daughter and Kate, and he just needs to realize it’s not always that hard, but maybe it can’t happen overnight. “Of course.”
It’s new. I don’t have to worry about what I’ll do this early, do I?
No. But I’ll have to worry about it eventually.
HE JOINSus the next evening at the beach, but it’s not the way it was before. He talks to the twins—he even briefly plays the ice cream game—but there’s something wary in his posture, as if he’s sure we’re about to ask him for too much.
I allude to teaching Henry to surf and he looks at me as if he’s hearing it for the first time when it washisidea.
It’s as if, in order to move our relationship forward a few paces, he had to move his relationship withthemback to the start. And I suspect I know why.
“Your daughter,” I begin, as the twins run down to the water. “Did you ever see her?”
He seems unwilling to even answer this one small question. “Yes,” he says, his jaw grinding. “Kate was still holding her. She wouldn’t...I was the only person who could convince her to let go.”
My heart squeezes tight. How can he possibly believe that didn’t affect him?
“Who did she look like?” I ask.
He runs a hand through his hair and exhales heavily. “Why the fuck are we discussing this?”
Because it was harder on you than you’re willing to admit. Because you need to discuss it with someone and you won’t, and I think it’s just going to fester. Because I’m scared we’ll never become what we could be, what we were meant to be, until you come to terms with it.
“Sorry,” I tell him, giving his hand a quick squeeze.
He’s quiet for a long moment before he sighs. “She looked like me.”
30
LUCIE
He’s gone a day later. I try to let him take the space he needs, and when he calls, I don’t tell him about the cute thing Sophie said or the way I heard Henry laughing in his sleep. I don’t tell him that Henry stared at his house tonight, looking for signs of life, or that I was watching Henry do it and wondering if I’m setting my kids up to be rejected by all the adult men in their lives like I was.
He talks about work, about his trip, about the boat—as he should, because these are things he cares about. But I don’t love the fact that it now feels as if Ican’ttalk about the thing I care about the most.
The next afternoon I take the twins to the toy store—a rare indulgence. It’s less about offering them a moment of joy than it is offering one to myself. It was always hard, having Caleb take off for some distant city or continent, even before we were together. But it’s a lot harder now.
Sophie vigorously debates the merits of Legos versus a board game with me, but Henry wanders off. I find him standing in the science section, staring intently at all the models and projects for much older children.
“I want this,” he says quietly, holding one of them to his chest.
I squat down to examine the box, which holds some kind of robotic arm you build yourself. He won’t even be able to read the directions. “Honey, this is for adults.”
“I want to build it with Caleb. For the show.”
My heart sinks. He’s referring to the kindergarten’s end-of-year program, which all the parents attend. Most of the kids plan to do something for it—Sophie is hell-bent on performing a fairly inappropriate pop song—but I assumed Henry would refuse to participate, and here he is, willing—askingto do it.
