Chapter 9: What Cara Said Over Coffee
The coffee place on Larkin was quiet at eleven on a weekday.
A few older men with newspapers.
A woman working on a laptop near the window.
The kind of place where nobody paid attention to anyone else.
Cara was already there when Renee and I arrived.
She had a coffee in front of her and her hands wrapped around the cup the way people do when they need something to hold.
She looked up when we came in.
I sat across from her.
Renee sat beside me.
"Thank you for coming," Cara said.
"Thank you for last night," I said.
"I know that wasn't easy."
"It wasn't." She looked down at her cup.
"I almost didn't.
I sat in the car outside your house for twenty minutes before I knocked."
"What made you knock?"
She was quiet for a moment.
"I have a son who doesn't know his father," she said.
"I made my peace with that a long time ago.
But then I found out you were pregnant, and I thought — there's going to be another child.
Another child in this same situation.
And I couldn't let that happen without at least trying."
Renee put her hand on the table but didn't say anything.
"The texts," I said.
"You mentioned you kept everything."
"Yes."
"I'm not going to ask to see them.
I believe you." I looked at her directly.
"But I need to ask you something and I need you to be honest with me."
"Okay."
"Is there anything else?
Anything beyond what you told me last night?"
She considered this carefully.
The way someone does when they're deciding not whether to lie, but how much truth is theirs to give.
"There's one thing," she said.
"I don't know if it matters."
"Tell me."
"The balloon," she said.
"The envelope inside it."
I went still.
"He put it there," she said.
"Daniel.
He taped it inside the balloon himself, before the party."
"That's not possible.
The balloon was prepared by the party company—"
"He called them the morning of the party.
He said he wanted to add a personal note inside.
A surprise for you.
They let him come in and do it." She met my eyes.
"He told me this two weeks ago.
He called me and said he was going to tell you everything at the party.
That he'd put the documents inside so you'd find them in a way that felt — I don't know.
He said he wanted it to be real.
He didn't want to just hand you a piece of paper."
The coffee shop was very quiet.
"He planned it," Renee said softly.
"He planned it," Cara confirmed.
I sat with that for a moment.
Daniel had put the envelope in the balloon.
Daniel had arranged for his own exposure.
He had stood in the living room watching his mother steal it, watching her carry it to the garage, and he had let it happen.
Maybe he had even counted on it.
"He was going to tell me," I said.
"At the party.
In front of everyone."
"I think he needed it to be out of his hands," Cara said.
"I think he'd been carrying it so long he needed someone else to open it."
I looked at the table.
"That doesn't make it right," Renee said.
"No," I said.
"It doesn't."
But it was something.
I didn't know yet what kind of something.
I looked up at Cara.
"What do you want?" I asked.
"Not for Noah.
For you.
What do you want out of all of this?"
She seemed surprised by the question.
"I want Noah to know his father," she said.
"That's it.
That's all I've ever wanted.
I'm not trying to take anything from you.
I'm not trying to rebuild anything with Daniel.
I just want my son to have a father who shows up."
"Then that's what's going to happen," I said.
She looked at me carefully.
"I can't promise you anything about my marriage," I said.
"I don't know what that looks like yet.
But I can promise you that whatever happens, Daniel is going to be present for Noah.
I'll make sure of it."
Her eyes went bright for a moment.
She blinked it back.
"Why?" she asked.
"Why would you do that for me?"
"I'm not doing it for you," I said.
"I'm doing it for a three-year-old boy who pointed at his father last night and asked if he had any juice."
Cara made a sound that was half laugh, half something else entirely.
Renee reached across the table and handed her a napkin.
We sat there for another hour.
We talked.
Not about Daniel, mostly.
About Noah.
About what he liked.
About the way he said "ambliance" instead of "ambulance" and refused to be corrected.
About how he had started asking questions about fathers because a boy in his playgroup had one who came to pickup every day.
When we left, Cara hugged me at the door.
It was brief.
A little awkward.
Completely genuine.
"I hope it works out," she said.
"Whatever you decide."
"So do I," I said.
Renee and I walked back to the car in silence.
"Well," Renee said, when we got in.
"I know."
"What are you going to do?"
I looked out the windshield at the green awning of the coffee place.
"I'm going to go home," I said.
"And I'm going to talk to my husband.
And then I'm going to decide."
"And if you decide to leave?"
"Then I leave."
"And if you decide to stay?"
I was quiet for a moment.
"Then we do the work," I said.
"All of it.
No more buried envelopes."
Renee started the car.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I think you're the strongest person I know."
"I'm really not."
May you like
"You are." She pulled out into the street.
"You just don't feel it yet."
