Chapter 3

The next morning, I got up later than usual. When I came downstairs, he was already sitting at the table with nothing in front of him.

The housekeeper had the day off.

Before, I would have had breakfast ready. Daniel had a bad stomach and couldn't drink coffee before he ate. I had been reminding him for seven years.

He saw me and frowned. "Where's breakfast?"

My steps slowed. "I don't know."

He looked like he hadn't understood. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Make whatever you want."

I went into the kitchen to warm Ethan's milk, and Daniel followed me in. "How long are you going to keep this up?"

I ignored him.

He watched me put eggs, bread, and fruit on a plate. "You'll make it for our son but not for me?"

"That's right."

"Joanna." He leaned against the counter. "Is this fun for you?"

I carried the milk out. "Kind of, yes."

That left him with nothing to say, and his face went dark. I never used to talk to him like that.

It wasn't that I hadn't dared. It was that I hadn't wanted to.

He was busy with work, and I always felt these little household things weren't worth keeping score over.

Later I learned that once a person got used to being taken care of, they started treating it as their due. The day it stopped, it looked like the other person had done something wrong.

Ethan came down the stairs with his backpack on. "Mom." He ran over to me, then looked at Daniel. "Dad, are you taking me today?"

Daniel hesitated. "Dad has a meeting this morning."

The hope drained out of Ethan's face. "Oh." He put his head down and drank his milk.

He didn't make a fuss. He didn't even ask a second time.

Watching him drink his milk with his head down, something in my chest tightened. No six-year-old should have been that used to being let down.

After breakfast, I took Ethan to school. Before I left, Daniel stopped me. "Come home early tonight. We should talk."

I glanced at him. "Talk about the divorce?"

His face fell. "Is divorce the only word you know now?"

"You're the one who wants to talk." I pulled the door open. "If it isn't about the divorce, there's nothing to talk about."

When I got home that evening, Daniel was waiting in the living room with two glasses of water on the coffee table.

He seemed a lot calmer than he had the night before. "Sit down."

I sat down across from him.

He looked at me. "Last night you decided, without asking me a single question, that I've been putting Lydia ahead of you all these years."

I gave a small smile. "Do I need to ask?"

"Of course you do." He kept his voice low. "Joanna, when it's somebody's life against somebody's feelings, there's an order to these things.

"You know how bad Lydia was right after Charles died. Stella was five. What's wrong with me looking after them a little more?"

I nodded. "Nothing."

He frowned. "Then what are you keeping score over?"

I looked up at him. "Do you remember the year Ethan turned four and spiked that fever?"

Daniel stopped short. Of course he remembered.

That night, Ethan's fever hit 104. The two of us took him to the hospital together.

When they drew his blood, Ethan cried so hard he shook, and he clung to Daniel's neck and wouldn't let go.

Daniel promised him then. "Daddy isn't going anywhere tonight."

Then, at one in the morning, Lydia called. Her power had gone out, and Stella had been afraid of the dark since she was little. Nothing anyone tried worked, and she kept crying for "Uncle Daniel."

Lydia was crying on the other end too, saying she had no idea what to do.

Daniel hung up and started putting his coat on.

I couldn't believe it. "Where are you going?"

He said, "I'm going over to check on them."

I looked at Ethan in the hospital bed, his face red with fever. "Ethan's still on an IV."

Daniel touched Ethan's forehead. "The doctor said the fever's down. And you're here."

I asked him, "What about Stella?"

"Lydia's on her own."

That was all it took. He left.

Ethan woke up in the middle of the night, and the first thing he asked was, "Where's Daddy?"

I didn't know what to tell him, so I said Daddy had something to take care of.

Daniel came back the next morning with a toy Ethan liked, as if that made the night before disappear.

I studied his face. "Are you remembering it now?"

His face stiffened. "Stella really wasn't stable back then."

"I never said she didn't need somebody with her. But Ethan was sick too."

"You were there." It came out of him before he could stop it, and the living room went quiet.

I laughed. "Right. That line again."

Daniel pressed his lips together.

I kept going. "What about my mother's surgery the year before last?"

His frown got tighter. "What does that have to do with this?"

"Everything."

That day my mother, Nancy Reed, was having her gallbladder out. It wasn't major surgery, but she was getting older and she had high blood pressure.

My father had died years before.

Nancy held on to my hand right up until they wheeled her into the operating room.

Daniel had promised me he would stay.

Then, right after we got to the hospital, Lydia's car broke down at a highway exit with Stella in it, and the tow truck couldn't get out there for a while.

Daniel took the call and left again.

I asked him, "Can't the insurance company handle it?"

He said, "She's on the side of a highway with a kid. I can't leave it."

I pointed at the operating room. "And my mother?"

He was quiet for a few seconds. "There are plenty of doctors in this hospital. Your mother will be fine."

It was the same as always. Lydia needed him, and on my side there was always somebody else.

There were doctors, there were nurses, and there was me.

When Nancy came out of surgery, she was still under, and I sat with her alone until night.

When Daniel came back, the first thing he said was, "Good thing she's all right."

It sounded like proof of his point. He had been right, and nothing had gone wrong without him there.

I looked at him. "Do you know why I stopped asking you to come to the hospital with me?"

Daniel had nothing to say to that.

I answered it myself. "Because I realized that as long as somebody else could do it, it was never going to be you."

His face slowly darkened. "Joanna, are you dragging out every single thing from the last three years to settle up?"

I admitted it outright. "Yes. I'm getting a divorce. If I don't settle it, am I supposed to walk out in a fog?"