Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Jack
She clocked it before we'd made it ten steps from the gate.
I felt her looking at me—that particular Lily assessment, the one that missed nothing—and then she said, without preamble:
"What happened to your face?"
"What?"
"It looks different."
I kept my eyes on the street ahead. "I don't know what you mean."
She didn't look away. We kept walking, our shadows stretching out in front of us.
"You're smiling," she said.
"I smile."
"Not like that."
"Like what?"
She took a second to work it out. "Like Gerald," she said finally. "When he gets the good spot on the radiator."
I had no response to that. We walked past the cat on the wall—she pointed, I nodded, the usual—and turned onto the main street. It was a good afternoon. The kind Clear Creek did in late spring, the light going gold at the edges, the air doing something that wasn't quite warm but wasn't cold either.
"Did something good happen?" Lily said.
"It was a good day."
"At the garage?"
"Garage was closed today."
She processed that, her brow furrowing. "So what did you do?"
"Laundry. Tidied the house."
She stopped for a second to look at me. Even at five—nearly six, as she’d reminded me twice this week—she had a very effective look for when she knew she was being managed.
"And?" she said.
"And what?"
"You don't smile like that about laundry."
I kept walking.
She let it go, which was unusual. It meant she was filing it for later. She moved on to school instead—an incident involving Noah and the class fish tank that she relayed with the accuracy of a court reporter. It included a dramatic reconstruction of Mrs. Alvarez's expression.
I listened and made the right noises. We kept a steady pace, and for the first time in a decade, I wasn't looking for the nearest exit. I was just... there. It was a lightness I hadn't felt in—I didn't even know how long. It felt strange.
Good strange.
We stopped at the corner shop for milk. Lily managed to talk me into a bag of gummy bears, a total tactical win she probably sensed I was too distracted to fight. I gave in because it was a good day, and apparently, I really was smiling like Gerald on the radiator.
Outside, she walked beside me in her purple fox jacket, the gummy bears crinkling in her hand. Somewhere between the shop and the house, she slipped her hand into mine. She didn’t ask, and she didn’t look up. It was just what you did when you were walking and someone was there.
I looked down at her.
She was staring at the street ahead, working through a green gummy bear with total focus. She had no idea what she’d just done to me.
I thought about Maddie. The afternoon, the conversation, the way the light had hit the floorboards in her room.
Lying there, I’d felt something that had been snapped for twelve years finally beginning to set.
I thought about I’m working on it and more than enough and the way she’d looked at me when she woke up.
I thought about what Cassie would make of all this. I had a feeling I knew.
"Is Maddie coming on Friday?" Lily asked. She was still watching the street, still chewing. She asked it the way she asked everything—like she was just checking the oil.
"Yeah," I said. "I think she is."
Lily nodded. Satisfied. She held out the bag. "Gummy bear?"
"Thanks."
We walked home.