Chapter 5: The One Question That Mattered
I walked into the kitchen.
Max followed me.
I pulled out a chair and sat down and he climbed up onto the one beside me, the way he always did, tucking his feet under himself.
I could hear Jason and Patricia in the entry hall.
Low voices.
I didn't try to listen.
"Are you okay?" I asked Max.
He thought about it seriously, the way he thought about most things.
"I didn't like having the paper," he said.
"I know."
"It felt heavy."
I looked at him.
"In your pocket?"
"In here." He touched his chest.
I put my hand over his.
We sat like that for a moment.
Jason came into the kitchen doorway.
Patricia had not followed him.
"She's gone," he said.
"I asked her to go."
I nodded.
He sat down across from us.
He looked tired in a way that wasn't about tonight.
It was the kind of tired that had been building for a long time and had finally stopped pretending.
"You thought I was leaving you," I said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
He looked at the table.
"You stopped talking to me.
Not—not in a fight.
Just quietly.
Like you were already somewhere else." He turned his coffee cup in his hands, though it was empty.
"Last November.
You remember that weekend when your sister visited?"
"Yes."
"You were different after that.
Lighter.
Like something had been decided." He looked up.
"I asked you about it twice.
You said it was nothing."
I was quiet for a moment.
"She asked me to move closer to her," I said.
"To her city.
She's been unwell.
She didn't want to tell anyone yet." I paused.
"I was thinking about it.
What it would mean.
Whether we could make it work as a family."
Jason stared at me.
"You were thinking about moving.
For your sister."
"Yes."
"Not—" He stopped.
"Not leaving you." I held his eyes.
"Never that."
He put both hands flat on the table.
He didn't say anything for a long time.
Max looked between us.
"So Mom's not leaving," he said.
"No," I said.
"Then why did Daddy look like that?"
"Like what?" Jason asked.
Max considered this carefully.
"Like when I lost Rabbit and we didn't find him for three days."
Jason made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost wasn't.
I looked at my husband across the table.
At the months written on his face.
At the plan he had built in secret because he hadn't known how to ask me to stay.
At the note he had put in our son's pocket because he was preparing for a loss that was never coming.
"You could have asked me," I said.
"I know."
"Instead of building something to make me stay."
"I know."
"Jason." I waited until he looked at me.
"I don't need a dinner.
I don't need an account or a presentation or a surprise." I paused.
"I need you to talk to me."
He nodded.
It was a small nod.
The kind that means more than a large one.
"I didn't know how," he said.
"I know you didn't."
"I'm not—" He stopped.
"I'm not good at saying when I'm scared."
"I know that too."
Max slid off his chair and went to the refrigerator and opened it and stood there looking at it the way children do, as though something new might have appeared since the last time.
"Can we have eggs?" he asked.
"It's seven o'clock," I said.
"Eggs are good at seven o'clock."
I looked at Jason.
He looked back at me.
"I'll make eggs," he said.
He stood up.
He touched my shoulder as he passed — not a gesture that asked for anything, just one that said: I'm here.
I'm still here.
I sat at the kitchen table and watched my husband crack eggs into a pan and listened to Max explain at length why scrambled was superior to fried, and I thought about the red dress still lying on the foot of the bed upstairs.
I would hang it back up tomorrow.
It was not a goodbye dress.
It never had been.
May you like
But there was still Patricia.
And what she had known, and chosen to keep, was not something I was prepared to leave unfinished.
