CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Asha chose the restaurant because none of us had memories there.
No birthdays. No anniversaries. No booth where Terrence used to cut her pancakes when she was small.
No bartender who remembered us as a couple and would ask where we had been.
Just a quiet Italian place in Cherry Hill with warm bread, white plates, and a hostess who seated us at a round table near the back.
Asha arrived first. I came five minutes later.
Terrence arrived twelve minutes after that and looked surprised nobody had waited to order drinks.
“You said six,” I told him.
“It’s six twelve.”
“Exactly.”
Asha stared at the menu. I let it go. Terrence took the chair across from me. He wore a brown sweater I had bought him two Christmases ago, which felt either careless or intentional. I could not decide which and refused to spend the evening trying.
“Where’s Danae?” Asha asked.
“At home.”
“Which home?”
He looked at her. “My place.”
“For three more weeks.”
“Asha.”
“What?”
“Can we order first?”
“No.”
The server appeared with water and sensed the table fast enough not to ask whether we were celebrating.
Terrence ordered bourbon.
I ordered wine. Asha asked for ginger ale, then folded her menu and put it down.
“Tell me why you’re moving.”
Terrence set his hands on the table. “Danae accepted a regional position in Charlotte. My company has been trying to move me into the southern division for almost a year. The timing lined up.”
“That’s why it works,” Asha said. “I asked why you want to go.”
He glanced at me as if I had taught her the question. I lifted my glass and said nothing.
“I’m ready for something different,” he said.
“Different from what?”
“From being stuck.”
Asha’s face changed. “Here is stuck?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You keep saying things and then telling me that’s not what you meant.”
Terrence leaned back. “I have spent twenty-five years building a career here. I stayed through a divorce, a public party, strangers talking about my marriage online—”
“Stop,” I said.
His eyes came to me.
“You’re not moving because I had a party. Don’t put that on her.”
“I didn’t.”
“You listed it before the drinks came.”
“This is exactly why I didn’t want to do this with you here.”
Asha pushed her menu toward the middle of the table. “I asked her to come.”
Terrence looked at his daughter. “And I came.”
“You came late.”
“Asha.”
“No. You always do that. You say my name like I’m being disrespectful so you don’t have to answer.”
He went quiet. I felt the urge to step in, soften the edges, translate each of them for the other. I had done it for years. Terrence said something hard, Asha reacted, and I turned the collision into language everybody could survive. Tonight, I kept my mouth closed.
Asha continued. “You called me every night during the divorce. You told me when Mom’s attorney sent something. You asked what she said about you. You got mad if I didn’t answer, but now I’m grown and you can leave in three weeks because I’m at school most of the time?”
Terrence’s jaw tightened. “I called because you’re my daughter.”
“You called because you were lonely.”
The bourbon arrived. He took a drink before answering.
“That can be true too,” he said.
Asha blinked. So did I. It was the first honest thing he had offered without being cornered into it.
He rubbed one hand over his knee. “I leaned on you too much. I can admit that.”
“When?” she asked. “Now that you don’t need me?”
“That’s not fair.”
“It doesn’t feel fair.”
Terrence looked at me again. I shook my head once. Do not hand this back to me. He understood.
“I’m moving because I want the job,” he told Asha. “Because Danae and I are trying to build something. And because every place I go here, somebody knows me as Nadine’s ex-husband or the man from that video.”
“The video wasn’t about you,” I said.
“It became about me.”
“That is what strangers did with it.”
“You stood there while they cheered.”
“I’m not apologizing again for celebrating my divorce.”
Asha pushed her chair back an inch. “Can y’all not?”
We stopped. The server returned. Nobody was ready to order, but Terrence picked something from the menu just to end the interruption. I ordered the same pasta I had barely read. Asha ordered soup.
When the server left, she asked, “Did you even think about staying closer?”
Terrence took his time.
“I did.”
“And?”
“And I chose Charlotte.”
Pain moved across her face before she hid it. He reached across the table. She moved her hand into her lap. Terrence pulled his back.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
“You are literally leaving.”
“I’m a flight away. A drive away. I’ll come up. You’ll come down.”
“You don’t visit me now, and I’m forty minutes away.”
That hit him. He stared at her. She stared back.
I had heard Asha complain that her father did not come to campus unless there was an event he could photograph.
I had also watched her answer every call he made and turn down plans when he said he needed company.
Terrence had mistaken access for closeness. I knew something about that mistake.
He lowered his voice. “I can do better.”
“From North Carolina?”
“From wherever I am.”
Asha’s eyes filled. “You could’ve done better here.”
The table went still. No joke could save it. No speech needed to follow. Terrence looked down at his drink. Asha stood.
“I need air.”
I started to rise.
She held up one hand. “Please don’t.”
I sat back. She walked toward the front door without her coat.
Terrence watched her go. “You gonna let her walk outside like that?”
“She asked me not to follow.”
“It’s cold.”
“She’s twenty-one,” I said.
He heard his own words and looked away. For a minute, neither of us spoke.
Then he said, “You’re enjoying this.”
I stared at him. “Watching our daughter cry?”
“Watching me be the bad parent.”
“You don’t need help with that tonight.”
His face hardened.
I leaned forward. “Do not make me your opponent because facing her is uncomfortable. She isn’t upset because I coached her. She’s upset because you used her like a wife during the divorce and announced your new life like she was an employee receiving a transfer memo.”
“I never used her like a wife.”
“You called her about me. You asked her to keep secrets. You made her reassure you. That is not her job.”
“You did the same thing.”
The accusation came fast. I sat back.
“Did I?”
Terrence opened his mouth, then closed it.
I thought about every time I had asked Asha if her father seemed happy.
Every time I had made a small comment about his schedule and waited to see if she filled the gap.
Every time I had been careful enough to avoid saying a direct bad word while still allowing my silence to say it.
“Maybe I did,” I said.
The answer surprised him. It surprised me too.
“I’m working on stopping,” I continued. “You need to do the same.”
His gaze moved over my face. “That contractor teaching you accountability?”
There it was.
“No. Losing myself taught me. Warren just doesn’t argue when I find pieces.”
Terrence’s mouth tightened around the name.
“You’re sleeping with him?”
I laughed without humor. “We are not doing this.”
“It affects our daughter.”
“My sex life does not affect our grown daughter unless you keep discussing it with her.”
“She met him at your house.”
“She used her emergency code during a date.”
“You gave him access while the project is still going?”
“He owns the company renovating it.”
“You see how that sounds?”
“I see how badly you need it to sound wrong.”
The server set down our food and retreated quickly.
Terrence waited until she left. “He wants control too. Men like that always do.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I know men.”
“You knew yourself and still lied for two years.”
His face changed. The sentence was cruel.
It was also true. I did not apologize for it, but I did not add another.
Asha returned with cold arms and dry eyes.
She sat without looking at either of us.
We ate a few bites because food had arrived and adults sometimes pretended chewing was the same as surviving a conversation.
Terrence eventually said, “I’ll come back once a month.”
Asha stirred her soup. “Don’t promise that tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because then I’ll count.”
He looked wounded. Good, I thought. Then hated myself for thinking it.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
That was honest too.
Terrence nodded. “Okay.”
The rest of dinner did not resolve anything.
He gave her the address of the new apartment.
She told him she was not coming to Charlotte the first weekend because she had exams. He offered to help move her belongings from the old house.
She said she would choose what she wanted before he packed it.
Small decisions. No group hug. No clean ending.
In the parking lot, Asha let Terrence hug her, but she kept her arms at her sides for the first few seconds.
When she finally lifted them, his face folded against her hair. I looked away. He had hurt us.
He loved her. Both were true, and neither erased the other.
Asha drove back to campus. Terrence left in the opposite direction.
I sat in my SUV with the engine off. My hands would not stop shaking.
I did not want to call Portia. She would make me laugh, and I did not want to climb over the feeling that fast. I did not want to call my mother.
She would ask whether Terrence had eaten and remind me marriage was hard, as if difficulty was a reason to keep swallowing it. I called Warren.
He answered, “You okay?”
“No.”
“Where are you?”
“Restaurant parking lot.”
“Do you want me to come?”
I closed my eyes.
“Yes.”
He arrived twenty-one minutes later in the black Ford, wearing a sweatshirt and dark pants. No coat over a suit. No work bag. He parked beside me and walked to my driver’s door. I lowered the window.
“Get in,” I said.
Warren opened the passenger door and sat beside me. For a minute, I stared through the windshield. He did not touch me.
“I was mean,” I said.
“To who?”
“Terrence.”
“Did you lie?”
“No.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No. I said things to hurt him because he was making Asha cry.”
Warren rested one arm on the console. “You want me to tell you that was fine?”
“No.”
“Good, because I wasn’t there.”
I looked at him. “You drove twenty-one minutes to be useless?”
“I drove twenty-one minutes because you asked me to come.”
The answer broke the tension in my chest. I covered my face with both hands.
Warren waited while I cried. Not pretty crying.
My nose ran. My mascara burned. I said I was sorry to a man who had not caused any of it, then got mad when he handed me a clean handkerchief because men with handkerchiefs were suspicious.
“It’s cotton,” he said.
“Why do you have it?”
“My father carried one.”
“That does not answer why you do.”
“It works.”
I laughed once through the tears and hated him a little for making it possible.
When I could breathe again, I said, “I don’t want to go back to that apartment.”
“Come to my house.”
The invitation was quiet.
“No expectations?”
“No.”
“You answered too fast.”
“I’m tired, you’ve been crying, and you told me where you don’t want your first time after your marriage to happen. I can understand context.”
I wiped my face. “You remembered the portable toilet.”
“It was memorable.”
I followed him to his house in Mount Airy.
It was a stone twin with a deep porch, dark windows, and a front door painted blue.
Inside, the rooms were warm without being styled for approval.
Books on shelves. A worn leather chair. Framed photographs of Milan at every age.
A dining table with scratches that had not been repaired.
“You live like a person,” I said.
He took my coat. “What did you expect?”
“Labels.”
“There are labels in the pantry.”
“Of course.”
He heated soup without asking if I was hungry.
I ate half because he put it in front of me and because grief, anger, and family conflict did not cancel the body’s need for food.
We sat on the sofa afterward. I told him what Asha said about counting visits if Terrence promised too much.
I told him I had used our daughter for information too, just more quietly.
I told him I did not know whether divorce made me honest or simply removed the person I had practiced lying beside.
Warren did not organize the confession into a lesson.
He said, “You sound tired.”
“I am.”
“Sleep.”
“Right here?”
“There’s a guest room.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
His eyes held mine. I lay down with my head in his lap. He put one hand on my hair and left it there. No stroking designed to seduce me. No speech about safety. Just weight. Warmth. Presence. I fell asleep before I could be embarrassed by how badly I needed it.