Chapter 13 - Two Things Can Be True
The baby wasn’t coming yet.
Emily called me later from a hospital room, tired but steady.
“They’re keeping an eye on me.”
“Do you need anything?”
“A different week.”
I laughed softly.
“Fresh out of those.”
Mark was with her.
She had allowed him to come, but she hadn’t agreed to move home.
“He’s being helpful,” she said, sounding cautious about trusting the word.
“I’m glad.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
There was a pause.
“I don’t know if I can forgive the person he was at that shower.”
“You don’t have to decide tonight.”
“Neither do you.”
“I’m not deciding whether to be married to him.”
“No,” she said. “You’re deciding whether he can become someone your boys can count on.”
I sat with that after we hung up.
Later, Nora and I reviewed the parenting plan.
Regular visits.
Clear communication.
No posting the children online.
A gradual move toward longer time together, based on how they were doing.
Practical sentences for a problem that had once seemed made entirely of pain.
Mark and I met again with the mediator.
This time, he brought notes about the boys.
Owen liked his sandwiches cut into rectangles.
Luke needed warnings before leaving the playground.
Neither liked being surprised by loud hand dryers.
Small things.
The things fathers had to learn after announcing that they were fathers.
When the mediator stepped out, Mark spoke.
“I’m still angry you didn’t tell me.”
“I know.”
“I can be sorry for what I did and still be angry.”
“Yes.”
He looked surprised.
“So can I,” I added.
He rubbed his palms together.
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Maybe stop trying to make one of us the only person who was wrong.”
For a while, neither of us said anything.
Then I told him what I had been rehearsing for weeks.
“I was afraid of you making them feel unwanted. But I also didn’t want you back in my life. I let those two things become the same thing.”
His eyes filled.
“I should have found help. I should have made a plan. I shouldn’t have let silence make the decision.”
He nodded once.
No forgiveness.
Not yet.
But he heard me.
When we left, Diane was waiting in the lobby with an envelope.
It contained invitations to a family lunch.
“One table,” she said. “No speeches.”
Mark glanced at me.
I looked at the envelope.
We had managed an office, a park, and my kitchen.
May you like
A family table was where the worst damage had started.
Now Diane was asking us to sit down at one again.
