Chapter 5 - What He Hadn’t Seen
Emmett arrived the next morning in yesterday’s shoes.
His wedding ring looked strange on his hand.
He carried the yellow-blanket photograph wrapped in a dish towel.
Margot was sitting on my kitchen floor, building a crooked block tower.
He knelt beside her and uncovered the frame.
“I found somebody.”
She touched Phoebe’s face through the glass.
“Can she stay out?”
Emmett swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Even when Claire comes?”
“Yes.”
Margot set the photograph beside her blocks.
Then she went back to building.
She didn’t hug him.
I watched him accept that without asking her to make him feel better.
When she went upstairs for her slippers, he sat at the kitchen table.
“I canceled the honeymoon.”
“Does Claire know?”
“She’s at her sister’s. She thinks we need a few days to calm down.”
“And what do you think?”
He rubbed his face.
“I think I missed things.”
He told me about bedtime.
Claire wanted Margot to settle herself instead of calling for him.
He had thought that sounded reasonable.
He told me about Sundays.
Claire wanted more weekends without family commitments.
He had assumed Margot loved spending them with me.
“She does,” I said.
“That doesn’t mean she wants to be sent away.”
“Nobody said sent away.”
I let him hear his own words.
After a while, he looked toward the stairs.
“I kept thinking she was adjusting.”
“Maybe she was. Maybe she was learning to stop asking.”
His phone vibrated across the table.
Claire’s name appeared.
He turned it over.
“I loved being happy again,” he said.
There was shame in it, as if happiness itself had betrayed his first wife.
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Then how did I get here?”
I thought of the photograph wrapped in a kitchen towel.
“One thing you explained away at a time.”
He sat with that until Margot returned.
Then he asked whether she wanted to go home with him.
She looked at the picture.
“Is Claire there?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
The relief on his face hurt to watch.
He reached for her overnight bag.
Inside, beneath her pajamas, she had packed the pink dress herself.
He lifted it gently.
“Do you want me to hang this up?”
May you like
Margot shook her head.
“I’m giving it back. I don’t want to be in a wedding anymore.”
