“We raised a good boy who forgot how to be a good man,” she said softly. “He may still learn. That’s for him to prove. But it’s not for you to wait around for.”
I wiped my face.
“I’m going to talk to him tonight. I think I need to do it by myself.”
“Do you want us there?”
“No. This one’s mine.”
Margaret nodded slowly.
Something like pride moved across her face.
“Then do it,” she said. “And call me after, whatever the hour.”
I let Daniel have his evening.
He had planned one, which almost made me laugh.
When I came home, candles burned on the dining table and Thai takeout from our favorite place sat arranged on the good plates.
He had even worn the sweater I once told him made his eyes look kind.
Chapter 9
“I thought we could start the year on a clean page,” he said, a little shy.
I let him pour me sparkling cider.
I let him tell me about a podcast he had been listening to.
We ate almost the entire meal.
And with a distant sorrow, I noticed he was genuinely trying to be good company.
As if he believed the right atmosphere could substitute for the right facts.
At eleven-thirty, after we pushed aside the plates, I took a folded sheet of paper from my bag and placed it between the candles.
“Sit down,” I said, though he was already sitting.
He unfolded it.
I watched his eyes move across the page.
I saw the exact second he understood.
His breath stopped.
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
“Emily—”
“That’s the transfer from the twenty-eighth,” I said. “Eighteen thousand five hundred dollars, to an account in your name only. And two nights ago, I asked you directly whether there was anything about our money you wanted to tell me. You said no.”
“I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“After—”
