Chapter 9: Everything
Claire was in the garden when I got home.
She was sitting in the old wooden chair near the back fence, the one we'd meant to replace for three summers and never had.
The baby was in her arms, wrapped in a yellow blanket.
The evening light was low and soft.
The football was still on the lawn.
I came out and sat in the other chair.
The one beside her.
We didn't speak for a moment.
The garden was quiet.
Somewhere down the street a lawnmower was running.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"It's done."
She nodded.
She looked down at the baby.
"I need to ask you something," I said.
"And I need you to answer it honestly.
Not carefully.
Not the version you've been rehearsing.
Honestly."
"Okay."
"Did you love him?"
She was quiet for a moment.
The lawnmower stopped.
"No," she said.
"I don't think I did.
I think I was — I was lonely in a way I didn't know how to tell you about.
And he was there, and he listened, and I let it become something it should never have been.
But love?" She shook her head.
"No."
"Were you going to tell me?
Before tonight — before the delivery room — were you ever going to tell me?"
She looked at me.
"I wanted to.
A hundred times I wanted to.
And then I'd look at the boys, and at you, and I'd tell myself the results would come back and it would be yours and I'd never have to say it and we'd just — go on."
"That's not a plan, Claire.
That's a hope."
"I know.
I know that now."
"You were going to let me raise a child that might not have been mine, and never tell me."
"I was scared." Her voice cracked.
"I was so scared of losing you.
Of losing all of this.
I know that's not an excuse.
I know it doesn't make it right.
But that's the truth."
I looked at the garden.
At the fence that needed painting.
At the football on the grass.
"I've been trying to work out," I said, "whether I'm more angry about the affair or about the silence."
"Which is it?"
"The silence," I said.
"The affair was a betrayal.
But the silence — watching you go through the pregnancy, watching you decorate the nursery, watching you count down the days — that was something else.
That was you choosing, every single day, to let me believe something that wasn't certain."
She didn't argue with that.
She just sat with it.
"I'm not a perfect husband," I said.
"I know that.
I work too much.
I've been tired for years.
I haven't always been easy to talk to."
"Daniel—"
"I'm not saying that to excuse what you did.
I'm saying it because if we're going to do this — if we're going to try — then we both have to be honest about what was wrong before Marcus.
Because he wasn't the cause of it.
He was just where it went."
She looked at me.
Her eyes were very still.
"Are you saying you want to try?" she asked.
I looked at the baby.
At her small face in the yellow blanket.
At the way she slept with her fists loosely curled, like she was holding something she hadn't decided to let go of yet.
"I'm saying I don't know," I said.
"But I'm still here.
And I think that means something."
"It means everything," Claire said quietly.
"It means we start from the truth," I said.
"No more managing.
No more hoping it goes away.
If we do this, we do it honestly.
All of it."
"Yes," she said.
"All of it."
The back door opened.
Ethan stood in the frame, looking out at us.
"Dinner's ready," he said.
"Nan made pasta."
He looked at us both — at the two chairs pulled close together, at the baby between us — and something in his face relaxed.
Not all the way.
But enough.
"Tell her we're coming," I said.
He went back inside.
Claire looked at me.
"What's her name?"
I looked at our daughter.
I thought about what my mother had said on the first night: *call her your daughter until you know otherwise.* I thought about Finn on the stairs with his rabbit.
I thought about Ethan's face just now, reading the scene the way he always did.
"Rose," I said.
Claire's breath caught.
"That was your grandmother's name."
"I know."
She looked down at the baby.
"Rose," she said softly.
"Hello, Rose."
The baby didn't open her eyes.
But her fingers uncurled slightly, spreading open against the yellow blanket.
I stood up and held out my hand to Claire.
May you like
She took it.
We went inside.
