Chapter 3: The Walk to the Pier
I didn't answer him right away.
I picked up my fork.
Set it back down.
The food had gone cold.
"Why?" I said.
Caleb looked at the table.
"I just want to know."
"It doesn't matter how much it cost, Caleb."
"Mom." He looked up.
"How much."
Mia was watching him the way she watched things she didn't understand yet — very still, very careful.
"Eleven hundred dollars," I said.
"After the payment plan."
He didn't say anything.
His face did something I couldn't quite read — not guilt exactly, more like a number landing somewhere it hadn't expected to go.
"You did a payment plan?"
"I did three."
He pushed his chair back the rest of the way and stood up.
For a second I thought he was going to walk out.
Instead he picked up Mia's juice cup, which was about to fall off the edge of the table, and set it back in the center.
"Okay," he said.
"Let's go to the pier."
I looked at him.
"You don't have to."
"I know."
Mia was already sliding off her chair.
She grabbed my hand with both of hers and pulled once, the way she did when she'd already decided something and was just waiting for me to catch up.
The pier was a ten-minute walk from the restaurant.
Caleb didn't say anything for the first five minutes.
He walked slightly ahead, hands in his pockets, and I let him.
Mia walked between us, holding my hand, occasionally stepping over cracks in the pavement with great concentration.
At the halfway point, Caleb slowed down until he was beside me.
"Dad talks about the money stuff sometimes," he said.
"At his place."
I kept walking.
"What does he say?"
"That you were always stressed about it.
That it caused a lot of fights."
"That's true."
"He says it like it was your fault."
I didn't answer that.
"Was it?" Caleb said.
The question was flat.
Not accusatory.
He actually wanted to know.
"No," I said.
"It wasn't anybody's fault.
We just wanted different things."
Caleb was quiet for a moment.
"He bought a new TV last month.
Like a really big one."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm just saying," he said.
"He has money for that."
We reached the pier.
The boards were sun-bleached and slightly uneven underfoot.
Mia immediately ran to the railing and pressed her face between the bars to look at the water below.
I stood beside her.
Caleb stood on my other side.
The water was green-grey and moving slowly.
A pelican sat on a post at the far end, completely still.
"I'm sorry," Caleb said.
"For what I said at lunch."
"I know."
"I didn't mean it."
"I know that too."
He leaned his arms on the railing.
"I think I was just — I don't know.
Dad kept saying before we left that this place was going to be basic.
That you probably picked it because it was cheap."
My hands tightened on the railing.
"He said that to you?"
"Like three times."
I looked out at the water.
The pelican hadn't moved.
"Caleb," I said carefully.
"When did he start saying things like that to you?"
He shrugged.
"I don't know.
A while."
Mia tugged my sleeve.
"Mommy, look — there's a fish."
"I see it, baby."
But I wasn't looking at the fish.
I was thinking about the three payment installments.
About the way Caleb had repeated his father's exact phrasing at lunch — *nobody wants to be here* — and how I'd assumed it was just a seven-year-old being difficult.
It wasn't just that.
Someone had been putting words in his mouth for longer than one bad afternoon.
Caleb was quiet beside me.
Then: "Is that why you and Dad fought?
Because he said stuff like that?"
"Sometimes," I said.
"Did he say it to you too?
Like, that you were cheap?"
The pelican finally moved.
It opened its wings once, slowly, then settled again.
"Yes," I said.
"He did."
Caleb didn't respond right away.
When he did, his voice was smaller than I'd heard it in a long time.
"That's not okay," he said.
"No," I said.
"It isn't."
Mia had stopped looking at the fish.
She was leaning against my side now, one arm around my waist, looking up at her brother.
Caleb glanced down at her.
Something shifted in his face.
He put his arm around my shoulders.
Awkward, the way seven-year-olds are when they're trying to do something they've seen adults do.
We stood there for a while.
The water moved.
The pelican stayed.
I didn't count anything.
When we walked back, Caleb reached over and took Mia's other hand without being asked.
The three of us walked the rest of the way like that — her in the middle, swinging slightly between us.
That night, after I'd put Mia to bed and Caleb was brushing his teeth, my phone lit up on the nightstand.
A text from Mark.
*How did the pier go?*
I stared at it for a long moment.
Then I put the phone face-down and turned off the lamp.
But I didn't sleep.
Because underneath that text — underneath the reasonable, almost-kind tone of it — was a question I hadn't let myself ask yet.
May you like
If Mark knew enough to ask how the pier went, that meant Caleb had already texted him.
And if Caleb had texted him — what exactly had he said?
