Chapter 3: What Happens in the Car
Her words landed like something physical.
He said you two were already over.
I looked at Max.
He was staring at the sidewalk.
Not at me.
Not at her.
At the ground, like a man waiting for it to open up.
"Say something," I said.
He looked up.
"Can we not do this here?"
"You don't get to decide where we do this.
You lost that."
The woman — I still didn't know her name — took another step back.
"I'm going to go.
I'm sorry.
I genuinely didn't—"
"What's your name?" I asked.
She stopped.
"Dana."
"Dana." I kept my voice level.
"How long?"
She looked at Max.
He said nothing.
"Four months," she said quietly.
Four months.
Lily's birthday was three months ago.
Max had cried at her school play.
He'd held my hand in the dark of that little auditorium and squeezed it twice, the way he always did when he was happy.
Four months.
"Go home, Dana," I said.
She didn't argue.
She gathered her kids — they'd been standing frozen on the sidewalk, wide-eyed and still for the first time all afternoon — and she walked away without looking back.
I turned to Max.
"Get in the car."
"Sweetheart—"
"Don't.
Get in the car."
Lily was still standing by the café door.
I walked over to her and crouched down so we were eye level.
"Hey." I kept my voice soft.
"You okay?"
She nodded, but her chin was doing the thing it does before she cries.
"Dad and I need to talk about some grown-up stuff.
It has nothing to do with you.
You know that, right?"
She nodded again.
"I love you more than anything."
"I know, Mom."
I took her hand and we walked to the car together.
Max was already in the driver's seat.
I put Lily in the back, buckled her in, and got in the front.
Nobody spoke for two full blocks.
Then Lily said, "Dad, are you and Mom fighting?"
Max's jaw tightened.
"No, bug."
"It feels like you are."
"We're just talking."
"You're not talking.
You're being quiet."
He glanced at me.
I looked out the window.
"We'll talk later, Lily," I said.
"I promise."
She went quiet.
A minute later I heard the small sound of her headphones going in.
I waited until I was sure she couldn't hear us.
"Four months," I said.
"And you told her we were over."
"I never said that."
"She had no reason to make that up, Max.
She looked as blindsided as I was."
"I may have said things were complicated.
That we were going through a rough patch."
"A rough patch." I turned to look at him.
"We weren't going through a rough patch.
We were fine.
Or I thought we were."
He didn't answer.
"Were we not fine?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know." The words came out flat.
"You've been with another woman for four months and you don't know if we were fine."
"It wasn't — it didn't start as anything serious."
"But it became something serious."
Silence.
"Max."
"Yes," he said.
"It became something serious."
The street outside blurred slightly.
I blinked.
"Okay," I said.
Just that.
Okay.
Because there was nothing else to say in that car, with Lily three feet behind us and her headphones in and her whole world sitting exactly where she'd left it that morning.
He pulled into our driveway and cut the engine.
Neither of us moved.
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
I looked at our front door.
The wreath I'd hung in October was still there.
I kept meaning to take it down.
"Right now?" I said.
"I want to give our daughter dinner and put her to bed."
"And after that?"
May you like
I opened the car door.
"After that, you're going to tell me everything."
