Chapter 10 - The Room She Was Offered
He stayed on my porch after Margot went back inside to find her stuffed rabbit.
“I wasn’t agreeing,” he said.
“She’ll hear the hesitation anyway.”
“Margot doesn’t know.”
“She already asked whether she could live here if you had to choose.”
His face emptied.
I regretted the way I had thrown it at him.
I didn’t regret telling him.
“When?”
“Saturday night.”
He gripped the porch rail.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I keep thinking I can carry something for you without making it heavier for her. I’m learning that doesn’t work.”
He stared into the yard.
“I thought saying I’d think about it would stop the fight long enough for me to leave.”
“Then next time say you’re leaving.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It won’t be easy. Do it anyway.”
Margot appeared with the rabbit tucked under her arm.
Emmett crouched and zipped her coat.
“Your room is your room,” he said.
She blinked at him.
“I know.”
“And our house is your home. You don’t have to earn that by being quiet or good.”
“Can I still sleep at Grandpa’s?”
He let out a breath that almost became a sob.
“Of course.”
She thought about it.
“But not because I’m extra?”
He pulled her close.
“You’re not extra.”
I looked away to give them what privacy a porch could offer.
The next morning, he called me from the empty kitchen at his house.
“I told Claire no.”
I sat down.
“How did she take it?”
“She said I was letting a child run my marriage.”
“And?”
“I told her a child shouldn’t have to run anything. That’s my job.”
He had asked Claire to meet with him and a marriage counselor before they discussed living together again.
He had also made one thing clear: Margot would stay in her home, and nobody would tell her she was less important to make an adult feel more important.
“She said she’d come to one appointment,” he told me.
I wanted to call it progress.
I had learned to wait for actions.
“Then listen carefully.”
That evening, my phone rang again.
This time it was Claire.
May you like
“You got what you wanted,” she said.
Before I could answer, she added, “But Emmett hasn’t told you what he asked me to pack.”
