Chapter 9 - The House With the Lights On
I took Margot to my house while Emmett met with Claire.
He promised to pick her up at seven.
“We’ll get your pajamas and read the bear book,” he told her.
She held up two fingers.
“Twice?”
“Twice.”
At six forty-five, she put on her shoes.
At seven, she sat by the window.
At seven ten, my phone lit up.
Running late. Still talking. Can you keep her a little longer?
I looked at the back of Margot’s head.
Call her yourself, I wrote.
He called immediately.
I put the phone on speaker and handed it over.
“Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I need a little more time.”
“How much?”
A pause.
“I don’t know yet.”
“That’s okay.”
She said it quickly.
Too quickly.
Then she gave me the phone and began unbuckling her shoes.
I stepped into the kitchen.
“She was waiting at the window.”
“I know. Claire’s packing some things, and every time I try to leave, we start another argument.”
“You can end a conversation.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Your daughter understood seven o’clock.”
He exhaled hard.
“I can’t do everything right.”
“No. But you can tell her what you can actually do, and then do it.”
For a moment, I thought he had hung up.
“I’m leaving in five minutes.”
“Tell her.”
He did.
Then he arrived twenty-three minutes later, with his coat unbuttoned and his face pale.
Margot stood beside the couch.
“Are we still reading?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it’s late?”
“Even if it’s late.”
He carried her bag to the car and came back for her coat.
In the doorway, he stopped.
“She wants Margot here during the week. For a while.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“Claire?”
He nodded.
“She says the marriage needs a chance without everybody watching.”
“What did you say?”
He looked at me with eyes full of something I didn’t want to name.
“I said I’d think about it.”
May you like
I stepped back as if he had shoved me.
“Then you need to think faster.”
