Chapter 27 The Choice She Doesn’t Owe Him
Hank
I drove home from LoHi on Tuesday night by the long way, down Speer along the creek, and I didn’t turn on the radio.
I’d told her the truth. That was the thing I kept coming back to, stopped at red lights with the city going by.
I’d sat at her table and told her the truth, all of it, as clearly as I knew how, and I hadn’t promised her anything I couldn’t keep.
For most of my life, when I’d needed something badly from someone, I’d reached for whatever would get it.
I’d negotiated. I’d found the pressure point.
I’d made the offer they couldn’t turn down.
I’d known, sitting across from her tonight, exactly what she wanted to hear, and I’d known exactly how to say it, and I hadn’t said it.
It should have felt like a victory. It felt like standing at the edge of something very high in the dark.
Because she might say no.
I’d known that in November. I’d said it to myself a hundred times since.
But on Tuesday night, driving down Speer with her question still in my ears, I understood it differently.
She’d listened to the best answer I had.
She’d told me it was a good speech. She’d said she didn’t trust it yet. And she’d been right not to.
I’d done everything I could think to do, and it still might not be enough.
I hadn’t failed at the last minute. Priscilla’s lie had nothing to do with it.
There was nothing left to fix. It might simply have come too late.
Because I’d spent years teaching her to expect that I’d let her down eventually, and a lesson like that doesn’t come undone on anyone’s schedule but hers.
That was hers to decide. That was the whole point.
I pulled into the garage in Washington Park and sat in the dark car for a long time.
I didn’t sleep much that night. Around two, I got up and went down the hall to the yellow room and stood in the doorway.
The crib I’d built with Randy. The glider I’d bought after reading four reviews and sitting in six of them at a store in Cherry Creek.
The changing table stocked with diapers in three sizes, because the book Tess had lent me said babies grew out of newborn diapers faster than you’d think.
The car seat was already in my car, checked by a firefighter named Okafor.
The little shelf on the wall held a row of board books, including a second copy of the wildflower book, which I’d bought at the same time as the one I’d given Lesley at the shower.
I stood there and made myself imagine it.
A Saturday morning a year from now. Pulling up outside the condo in LoHi.
Lesley bringing our daughter down to the curb in her car seat, handing me the diaper bag, telling me what time she’d last eaten and how she’d slept.
Kissing the baby’s head. Saying, See you Sunday at five.
Going back upstairs to a life I wasn’t part of.
Me driving our daughter back to this house, to this yellow room, and the two of us spending the weekend here, just us.
It hurt so much I had to put a hand on the doorframe.
Then I made myself keep going, because somewhere in the last six months I’d learned that you don’t get to look away from the part that hurts just because it hurts.
A year from now, divorced, I’d still go to Dr. Morrow on Wednesdays.
I’d still be home by six. Diane would still run the emergency rotation.
Cheryl would still keep my daughter’s pediatrician appointments marked Do not move.
I’d still take my twelve weeks of leave.
I’d learn to braid hair from YouTube. I’d go to every recital and every parent-teacher conference, and I’d show up to the handoffs on time, and I’d never once say a word against her mother. Not one.
None of it would change. None of it had ever been for that.
I went back to bed, and somewhere near dawn, I slept.
Dr. Morrow listened to the whole thing on Wednesday afternoon, the question and my answer and Lesley’s reply. When I finished, she waited, the way she always did, to see if I had more.
“She said it was a good speech,” I said. “And that she didn’t trust it.”
“How did that feel?”
“Like being told the truth.” I looked at the window. The trees along the creek had filled in, deep green now. “She’s right. I’ve given her good speeches before. That’s what I do.”
“And now?”
“Now I wait,” I said. “And I’m trying to figure out how to wait without turning it into something else.”
“Something else like what?”
I thought about it. “Like a campaign. I can feel it trying to start. Part of me wants to do something. Show her something. Find the thing that’ll tip her over.
” I shook my head. “I’ve got a legal pad in my nightstand drawer with a list of grand gestures I wrote in April.
I haven’t done any of them. I haven’t thrown it away either.
Last night I thought about taking it out. ”
“Did you?”
“No.”
Dr. Morrow nodded slowly. “What would it mean,” she asked, “if she decides it’s too late?”
I’d been expecting the question. It still took me a long time to answer.
“It would mean she’s allowed to,” I said finally.
“That’s what I keep coming back to. If I’m really accountable for what I did, then she gets to decide what it cost. Not me.
I don’t get to decide that six months of showing up balances out seven years of not.
I don’t get to decide that because I’ve changed, she owes me another chance.
If I did all this so she’d come back, then it was never really accountability. It was just a longer negotiation.”
“And if she says no?”
“Then I keep doing it anyway,” I said. “For our daughter. For myself. Because it’s right.
Because I don’t want to be the man I was, whether Lesley’s watching or not.
” My voice cracked, and I let it. “And I grieve. I’ll grieve for the rest of my life, probably, in some way.
I had the best thing that ever happened to me, and I treated her like she’d wait forever, and she didn’t.
That’s what happened. That would be what I did. ”
Dr. Morrow was quiet for a long time.
“Hank,” she said. “In November, you came into this room and asked me how to get your wife back. Do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“You haven’t asked me that in months.”
I looked at her.
“I noticed,” she said. “I wanted you to know that I noticed.”
On Thursday, I went to Lesley’s appointment at ten.
We sat with the empty chair between us, and Dr. Kessler told us the baby had dropped, and neither of us said a word about Tuesday.
Afterward I went into the office and spent the rest of the day with Cheryl, finalizing the handoff plan for my leave.
We went through it line by line. Diane on operations.
Neil on development. Tom on The Summit’s reopening, which was scheduled for the second week of December.
A single standing call with the three of them on Monday mornings for the first month, then every other week, then none at all unless something truly needed me.
My out-of-office message, which Cheryl drafted and which said, with a directness I’d never have allowed a year before, that I was on parental leave and would not be responding to email until August.
“You want me to soften that?” Cheryl asked, reading it back.
“No. Leave it.”
She looked at me over her reading glasses. “You understand that when this goes live, half the industry’s going to think you’ve had a breakdown.”
“Let them.”
Cheryl set the tablet down. For a moment she didn’t say anything. Then she said, “Is Lesley coming home?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She might not.”
“And you’re still doing all this.”
“I’m still doing all this.”
Cheryl nodded slowly. She picked the tablet back up and made a note, and I thought that was the end of it. Then, without looking up, she said, “I’ve worked for you for seventeen years, Hank, and I’ve never been prouder of you than I am right now. For whatever that’s worth.”
I didn’t trust my voice. I nodded, and she went back to the leave plan, and neither of us mentioned it again.
That evening, Randy called.
“Dad says you sounded strange on the phone Wednesday,” he said. “Mom’s convinced something’s happening with Lesley.”
“Something is,” I said. “She’s deciding.”
“Mom’s worried. Dad’s worried. I’m a little worried.” He paused. “Do you want me to say anything to her? At the hospital, or whenever? Tess really likes her. Tess could...”
“No,” I said. “Randy, no. Please. Nobody says anything to her. Not you, not Tess, not Mom, not Dad. I mean it.”
“I just thought...”
“I know what you thought. I love you for it. But if anybody in this family tries to talk her into anything, I’ll never forgive them.
” I took a breath. “This is hers. It’s the only decision in this whole thing that was ever really hers, and I spent seven years making it for her without asking. Nobody’s going to make it for her now.”
Randy was quiet for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Got it. Nobody says anything.”
“Tell Mom and Dad too.”
“I’ll tell them.”
On Friday, Lesley’s maternity leave began.
I knew because she’d told me the date back in April, and it was in my calendar.
I didn’t text her. I thought about it for most of the morning, some small congratulations on finishing the project handoff, on her last day.
Then I didn’t, because I knew what it would be.
It would be me reminding her that I was here.
It would be me asking, without asking, whether she’d decided.
She hadn’t asked me for anything since Tuesday. So I didn’t send anything.
That afternoon I drove up to Evergreen and spent three hours in my father’s workshop helping him sand the rocking horse.
He’d taken it back after the shower because he’d decided the finish still had to be perfect, since a baby would put her mouth on every inch of it.
We worked side by side at the bench with fine-grit paper, not saying much.
The workshop smelled of maple dust and linseed oil.
The radio was tuned to a baseball game neither of us was listening to.
Around four, I set down the sandpaper.
“She might say no, Dad.”
My father kept sanding. He ran his thumb along the horse’s neck, over the little columbine he’d carved there, feeling for rough spots.
“Then she says no,” he said eventually. “And you’re still that girl’s father. And you still come up here on Saturdays and help me with whatever I’m building next.” He blew the dust off the carving. “Hand me the finer paper.”
I handed it to him. We kept working until the light went.
On Friday night, I cooked dinner for myself.
Chicken and rice and green beans, from a recipe my mother had given me over the phone, which I’d now made often enough that I didn’t need to look at it.
I ate at the kitchen island with the phone in the other room.
Afterward, I did the dishes and sat on the back porch for a while in the cool May evening, listening to the neighbors’ kids playing in the next yard, watching the light go down behind the trees in the park.
I thought about Lesley on the other side of the city, thirty-seven weeks pregnant, sitting at her own table with a legal pad, deciding. I hoped she was all right. I hoped the baby was letting her sleep. I hoped whatever she chose felt like hers.
I found, to my surprise, that I meant all three.
My phone buzzed on Saturday afternoon while I was in the yellow room, rearranging the board books on the shelf for the third time.
Can you come by tomorrow? Around four. I’ve made a decision.
I read it standing in the middle of the room. My hands were shaking. I made them stop.
I’ll be there at four, I wrote back.
I didn’t ask what she’d decided. It wasn’t mine to ask.