Chapter 3

The next morning, I drove Callie to school because neither of us trusted the quiet in the kitchen.

Her portfolio lay across the back seat. She had changed out of her dinner dress, but a paper name tag was still stuck to the sleeve of her jacket.

Evan had left before dawn.

He had texted me that he needed time to think.

I read it at a red light and nearly typed back that Callie needed time too. Then I deleted the message. It would have been too easy for him to turn it into another fight between us, another reason to say I had made the house unbearable.

Callie watched the rain slide down the passenger window.

"Dad says I don't have to decide right away," she said.

"About school?"

She nodded. "He said staying local for a year could be good. More practical."

Something cold slid down the back of my throat and settled.

The old answer rose to my lips before I could stop it. Your dad is under pressure. He didn't mean it that way.

I had said versions of it after he missed her ninth-grade open house. After he forgot to come home for the dinner she cooked on his birthday. After he told her he would look at her first design sketches and then brought his laptop to bed instead.

I gripped the steering wheel.

"Did he ask what you wanted?"

Callie gave a small shrug. "He asked if I could be flexible."

The word made something inside me go quiet.

Flexible had always sounded kind in Evan's mouth. Flexible was how we got through tight years and sick parents and a baby who would not sleep. But I was beginning to understand that it had become another way of telling the same person to bend.

"The money situation isn't your fault," I said. "And you don't have to make yourself smaller before you know the truth."

She looked at me then. "Are you mad at him because of Clara?"

I could have lied. I could have told her this was about budgets and paperwork, things adults handled without letting feelings spill into the car.

"I'm hurt," I said carefully. "And I'm trying to understand what happened. But you don't have to take care of how I feel."

Callie nodded, though she did not look relieved.

At the curb, she reached for her bag, then paused.

"He asked me a few times if I'd be okay staying close," she said. "He always said you'd understand."

I watched her walk toward the school doors with her shoulders pulled in, as if she could make the portfolio disappear against her side.

My phone rang before I could pull away.

It was the bank adviser Evan and I had used when we refinanced the kitchen years ago.

"Mrs. Hale," she said, "I need you to come in today. There's a joint credit application in progress, and it requires your decision before it moves forward."

I looked at the school building, then at the rain-dark street ahead.

"I'll be there at noon," I said.