Chapter 2
The allergist’s office had already sent a replacement EpiPen prescription to our pharmacy. Ethan had promised to take Sophie to the follow-up that morning, pick it up afterward, and handle all of it himself.
For once, I had not made a backup plan.
Sophie sat on the stairs tying her shoes when his phone rang.
Vanessa.
Ethan looked at the screen, then at me.
"I’ll call her back."
He made it three steps toward the door before the phone rang again. This time he answered. Vanessa was stuck across town, and Miles had been left waiting at school after an after-care mix-up. He was safe. A teacher was with him. She just could not get there yet.
"I can be there later,"
Ethan said. He listened, jaw tightening.
"Vanessa, he’s safe."
Another pause. His eyes closed for a second.
"Fine. I’ll go."
Sophie’s fingers stopped on her shoelace.
Ethan turned to me.
"You can handle Sophie’s prescription, right?"
I picked up my bag.
"I always can."
Just as I can decide when to stop enduring endlessly.
Relief crossed his face so quickly that I knew exactly what he had heard.
Permission.
He kissed Sophie’s hair, told her he would see her that night, and left.
Sophie watched the closed door for a moment. She did not ask why he had gone again. She pulled the knot in her sneaker tight and stood.
"Are we going to the doctor now?"
The question hit harder than I expected. No protest. No surprise. Just the next step after a plan changed.
I knew that move.
At the allergist, Sophie sat beside me while the doctor reviewed what had happened and checked her action plan. At the pharmacy afterward, she held the bag of new EpiPens while I checked the expiration dates.
She was nine. She had already learned how quickly a day could be rearranged around someone else’s absence.
The doorbell rang while I was putting the new EpiPens into the kitchen cabinet.
Vanessa stood outside with Miles beside her and Ethan’s dark wool coat folded over one arm.
"He left this in my car after pickup,"
she said.
"I figured I’d save him the trip."
I took the coat.
"Thanks."
That was all I said.
Vanessa waited as if she expected something else. When I didn’t step aside or ask about Ethan, her smile thinned.
"You know, Claire, I don’t call him every time something goes wrong."
I folded the coat once over my arm.
"I didn’t say you did."
"No, but you act like I’m constantly pulling him away from you."
She glanced toward Miles, who had wandered to the porch steps.
"Most of the time, I handle things myself. Ethan only steps in when it actually matters."
I looked at her.
She kept going.
"Yesterday was unusual. Today was a school problem. Last winter was different too, because that was Miles’s first performance after Mark died, and Ethan knew how hard—"
She stopped.
Not gradually.
One second she was talking. The next, her mouth closed.
Behind me, the front door opened.
Ethan had come home.
I looked at Vanessa first.
Then at him.
Neither of them asked what performance she meant.
A silver paper crown flashed through my memory. Sophie standing backstage last winter, asking me for the third time whether her dad would make it before the curtain opened.
That same night, Ethan had texted me from an
"unavoidable client dinner."
Vanessa shifted the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder.
"Claire, I was just saying—"
"What performance?"
Her eyes moved to Ethan.
That was the answer before either of them spoke.
I looked at him.
"That night was Sophie’s recital too."
His face changed.
My fingers tightened once around the coat Vanessa had just returned.
"So which recital were you actually at?"