Chapter 4: What My Father Didn't Know
I fell asleep on Grandma's lap sometime before midnight.
When I woke up, I was in my own bed.
Grandma was in the armchair in the corner of my room, a blanket over her knees, her eyes open.
"Is Dad okay?" I asked.
"He's downstairs," she said.
"He's been there all night."
I sat up.
Through the floor I could hear nothing.
No voices.
No television.
Just the quiet of a house where something had broken.
"Where's Karen?"
Grandma looked at me for a moment before she answered.
"She's gone to stay with her sister."
I didn't say anything.
I wasn't sure what I felt.
Not happy, exactly.
Not relieved.
Something more complicated than either of those things.
"Grandma," I said.
"Did you know she was going to do something like last night?
The balcony?"
"No," she said.
"I knew she was capable of it.
That's different from knowing."
I thought about that.
"Why didn't you tell Dad sooner?
About the notebook?"
She was quiet for a long time.
"I tried," she said finally.
"Twice.
The first time, he said I was having trouble accepting that he'd moved on from your mother.
The second time, he asked me not to come to the house for a month." She looked at her hands.
"I decided the best thing I could do was keep writing it all down.
Keep the photographs.
Wait until there was enough that he couldn't explain it away."
"He explained it away twice?"
"He loved her," Grandma said.
"People explain away a great deal when they love someone."
Downstairs, I heard a chair move.
Then footsteps on the stairs.
My dad appeared in the doorway.
He looked like he hadn't slept.
His shirt was the same one from the night before.
His eyes were red at the edges.
He looked at me for a moment without speaking.
Then he crossed the room, sat on the edge of my bed, and put his face in his hands.
"I'm sorry," he said.
The words came out muffled, pressed against his palms.
"I'm so sorry.
I didn't know.
I should have known.
I should have —"
"Daniel," Grandma said gently.
"I left him alone with her.
Every day.
I left him alone with her and I didn't —" His voice broke.
He stopped.
Tried again.
"He called you because he didn't think he could call me."
The room was very quiet.
I reached over and put my hand on his arm.
I didn't know what else to do.
I was seven.
I didn't have the words for what the moment needed.
But he felt my hand.
He looked up.
"I'm not going to let her near you again," he said.
"I promise you that.
Whatever it takes.
That's done."
I nodded.
He pulled me into a hug that lasted a long time.
Over his shoulder, I could see Grandma watching us.
She wasn't smiling exactly.
But something in her face had eased.
Like a door that had been stuck for a long time had finally, quietly, opened.
That morning felt like the end of something.
It wasn't.
Three days later, Karen came back.
She didn't knock.
May you like
She still had her key.
And she walked in while my dad was at work and I was the only one home.
