Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jack
Lily had taken Maddie upstairs to show her something—Gerald's house, she’d called it, which was an elaborate arrangement of a shoebox and some fabric scraps she’d been engineering for the past week.
I’d heard about Gerald’s floor plan in grueling detail over breakfast. I hadn’t been invited to the viewing.
I did the dishes.
The house had a different quality when Maddie was in it.
I’d noticed it that first night, and I noticed it now—something about the air, the way the rooms felt occupied in a different way.
Less like a house I was managing and more like a place where things happened.
I wasn't sure what to do with that observation, so I just kept my head down and scrubbed.
They came back down after twenty minutes.
Lily appeared first, satisfied in the way of someone who had successfully completed a presentation, and announced she was going to watch television for exactly twenty minutes before bed.
It wasn't a thing we'd agreed on, but I let go because I was watching Maddie come down the stairs and doing a poor job of pretending I wasn't.
Lily disappeared into the living room. The television hummed to life, low and steady.
Maddie came into the kitchen and stood beside me, exactly where she’d stood that first time. Without a word, she found the dish towel and started drying.
"This is becoming a habit," I said.
"Guess so," she said.
We worked through the last of it. The noise from the television in the other room, the water, the quiet of a house at the end of an evening. I was very aware of her standing there. I'd been very aware of her standing there for weeks and I was running out of ways to file it under something else.
"Listen," I said.
"Listen," she said, at exactly the same moment.
We both stopped.
She looked at me. I looked at her. Something moved between us that I wasn't going to name.
"Go ahead," I said.
"No, you."
I set the last bowl on the rack and dried my hands on the front of my jeans. I turned and leaned against the counter, needing the solid weight behind me.
"I don't want to make this weird," I said.
"It's not weird," she said, a little too quickly.
"It's a little weird."
She almost smiled, a small, tired flicker of an expression. "It's a little weird," she agreed.
I looked at the dish towel in my hands, twisting the fabric.
"We're adults," I said. "We were kids when—all of that.
A lifetime ago." I looked up, catching her gaze.
"And this—" I gestured vaguely at the kitchen, the low hum of the television, the three plates drying on the rack.
"This is for Lily. That’s what this is."
Maddie looked at me for a long moment, her eyes searching mine for a crack in the logic. "Right," she said.
"She needs people around her who knew Cassie. People who actually give a damn." I kept my voice as level as a spirit balance. "You give a damn. That’s obvious. So."
"So," she echoed.
"So we’re adults," I said again, because apparently, if I said it a third time, it might actually become the truth. "And we can be—we can do this. Whatever this is. Without it being—"
"Without it being a thing," she finished for me.
"Right."
"Because we’re adults."
"Right."
She looked at the counter. I looked at the counter. From the living room came the sound of Lily's program, something with a lot of cheerful music.
"I think that's very sensible," Maddie said, in a tone that was perfectly level and gave absolutely nothing away.
"It is sensible," I said.
"Very mature."
"Extremely mature."
She laid the dish towel down on the counter, smoothing the fabric with a precision that felt intentional. She was close enough that I could smell the cold night air still clinging to her coat—close enough that I could have reached out and—
I didn't finish the thought. I killed it before it could take a breath.
"Good," she said.
"Good," I said.
Neither of us moved.
Then Lily appeared in the doorway in her pyjamas, rabbit under her arm, and looked between us with the expression of someone arriving at a scene and drawing their own conclusions.
"It's been twenty minutes," she said. Her voice was flat, checking the receipts on our earlier agreement.
"Has it?" I said, my heart rate finally starting to settle.
"Yes." She turned her gaze to Maddie. "Will you be here next Friday?"
Maddie looked at me. I looked at Maddie. We were two "mature adults" suddenly paralyzed by the simple scheduling request of a five-year-old.
"We'll see," Maddie said.
Lily considered this with the attention she gave to things she'd already decided. "Okay," she said, and turned and went upstairs. We listened to her footsteps on the stairs, the creak of her door, and then nothing.
The kitchen was very quiet.
"I should go," Maddie said.
"Yeah," I said. "Right."
She got her coat. I walked her to the door.
We stood in the hallway for a moment, the yellow glow of the porch light spilling across the floor.
Outside, the night was cold and wide, and inside, the full weight of everything we’d just very carefully not said sat in the air between us like a physical barrier.
"Goodnight, Jack," she said.
"Night, Maddie."
She went.
I closed the door, leaned my head against the cool wood, and stood in the hallway for a long time, thinking about the words sensible and mature.
These were terrible words. They tasted like sawdust.