Chapter 2
A Room for Everyone
“I already told her you’d cover it.”
Ethan still held out the grocery list.
“Then tell her you were wrong.”
He picked up his phone, but his thumb hovered over the screen. Apparently, disappointing Vanessa required more thought than disappointing his daughter.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“Since September.”
Three months. Upstairs, Sophie was unpacking a suitcase he had watched her fill.
“September,” I repeated. “When you asked me to buy new sheets for our bed at the cabin?”
“The old ones needed replacing.”
“You picked the blue ones.”
I remembered holding two packages against my chest in the store while he chose. I had washed them, driven them to the cabin, and made the bed myself.
“Did you already know Vanessa would be sleeping in them?”
“Don’t make it sound like that.”
“How should I make it sound?”
He dropped the grocery list onto the table.
“I thought we could discuss it closer to Christmas.”
“You discussed it with everyone else.”
“Because I knew you’d react this way.”
He nodded toward the box of pajamas, as though my refusal to pay explained why he had hidden the trip.
“Show me what else you arranged in my house.”
Ethan opened the trip chat and handed me his phone.
“There. It’s a vacation, Madison.”
It was the same group we had used last Christmas. Only now, my name was missing.
A room list filled the screen. Beth had the guest room. The little room where Sophie kept her paints and crafts would hold their ski equipment.
“You found space for her mother and their skis.”
“Beth needs a proper bed.”
“And Sophie needs her father.”
The screen dimmed in my hand. Ethan reached over and tapped it awake, impatient for me to finish looking.
“She has you,” he said. “Vanessa doesn’t have anyone.”
I looked at the four names on the room list.
“She has her mother. She has her son. And apparently, she has my husband.”
A stair creaked behind us.
Sophie stood on the bottom step holding her gloves. They were the purple ones Ethan had bought her last winter, with little pockets for hand warmers.
“Did you know I wasn’t going when you told me to pack?”
Ethan turned.
“Honey—”
“You told me not to forget these.”
She held them up. I remembered him saying it over breakfast two days earlier. She had run upstairs to fetch them before her cereal went soggy.
“I didn’t want to upset you,” he said.
“So you let me pack?”
He took a step toward her. She moved to the hallway drawer and put the gloves inside, smoothing one over the other before closing it.
I went to her.
“You don’t have to take their picture,” I said.
“But Dad said—”
“I’ll tell them. You don’t have to.”
She leaned against me briefly, her forehead pressed into my shoulder. Then she went upstairs without looking at him.
Ethan waited until she was gone.
“You’re making her feel like she has to choose sides.”
I looked down at his phone, still in my hand.
Beneath the room list, Beth had asked a question.
Are you sure Madison doesn’t mind staying home?
Ethan’s answer sat directly below it.
She’d rather work. Sophie’s staying to keep her company.
I read it twice.
Then I placed the phone on the table between us, my finger resting beneath his words.
“Tell me when I said that.”