CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE #2
Cold air immediately fills the space where his body had been. My hand slides along his arm before releasing the sleeve, and the loss of contact leaves an almost physical ache.
Alexander puts both hands back in his pockets and does not look at me, perhaps because he needs to conceal the same reaction I am trying to control.
Lily remains focused on the photograph, oblivious to what happened in front of her.
“It’s appearing!”
We lean closer, this time maintaining a safe distance, and watch the shapes acquire color.
Lily’s face lights up.
“It’s beautiful.”
She gives me the photograph.
My chest tightens.
We look like a family.
Not one staged for the press, arranged by a contract, or created to protect an inheritance. We are simply the three of us on a Sunday: Lily with ice cream on her nose and the camera raised, Alexander smiling more at me than at the lens, and my hand closed around his sleeve.
The image captured the moment before either of us could correct it. It also caught Alexander’s hand against my back and the way my body leans toward his, far too comfortable for someone who insists upon maintaining a distance.
“Can I have a copy?” he asks.
“This one is mine,” Lily protests.
“We can take another.”
She presses the photograph against her chest.
“It won’t look the same.”
Alexander looks at the picture and understands what she means.
“Then it’s yours.”
“You could take a photograph of the photograph,” I suggest.
He removes his phone.
“Would that be acceptable?”
Lily considers the question seriously before granting permission. Alexander lays the image on the bench and takes one photograph without attempting to improve the light or framing.
Our daughter studies it again.
“I like it when we look like a family.”
The silence that follows is different from the one before.
My heart seems to stop, and I search for an answer that will not encourage a hope we may be unable to fulfill.
Alexander does not speak first.
A wise decision.
I crouch in front of Lily.
“We are your family.”
“I know.”
She points at the photograph.
“But like this, we look more like one.”
How am I supposed to explain to a five-year-old that a family does not depend on two adults touching, even though society, books, and probably half the stories she knows insist otherwise?
“Your family still exists when your dad and I sleep in separate rooms,” I tell her. “It exists no matter what happens between the two of us.”
Lily frowns.
“Even if you stop being married?”
Before I can answer, Alexander crouches beside us.
“Even if your mum and I don’t stay married forever.”
Lily looks at him.
The truth is difficult, but necessary.
“Are you going to separate?”
“We don’t know,” I answer.
“I don’t want you to.”
There it is: the fear I have been trying to avoid since agreeing to the contract marriage. I draw her gently closer.
“Sweetheart, you do not have to keep your father and me together.”
“But I can be good.”
The words destroy me.
“This has nothing to do with whether you are good,” I explain. “Adults do not make decisions about their relationships because a child behaved well or badly.”
She looks from me to Alexander.
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Nothing,” he says. “You get to be a child. You can be happy, angry, make messes, spill juice, and continue disliking peas.”
“I like them a little.”
“Progress.”
I touch her cheek.
“Your father will always be your father, and I will always be your mother. Whatever exists between us does not change either of those things.”
Lily thinks about that.
“You don’t disappear?”
Alexander answers before I can.
“I won’t disappear.”
His voice is so firm that I look at him.
“Even if Mum doesn’t want to be married to you anymore?”
Pain crosses his face, but there is no hesitation.
“Even then.”
“And if she gets another husband?”
My stomach drops. Alexander remains still for only a fraction of a second.
“I will still be your father.”
I know how much the answer costs him.
Perhaps Lily notices something because she reaches out and touches his face.
“Okay.”
It is enough. Children accept certain truths with a confidence adults may take years to recover.
Lily returns to the ducks with the camera and photograph. Alexander and I sit on the bench and watch her attempt to negotiate another pose from the nearest bird.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For not selling her a fantasy simply because it would have been easier today.”
He keeps his eyes on Lily.
“I don’t want her to believe she has to keep us together in order to keep me.”
“That matters.”
“Very much.”
A group of children runs past the bench. Alexander places one arm along the back behind me to stop a child from striking him with a plastic sword. He does not touch me, but the nearness of the gesture makes my body remember the embrace in the photograph.
Alexander seems to experience the same thing. He removes his arm as soon as the children pass.
The colors in the photograph on Lily’s lap continue to deepen.
“It does look like one,” he says.
“Like what?”
“A family.”
I do not answer.
Alexander does not attempt to use the photograph as an argument.
“Looking like one doesn’t mean it is enough,” he adds. “Nor does it turn what we have into something you haven’t chosen.”
That is the difference.
The old Alexander would have confused the image with possession, touch with permission, and my smile with forgiveness. The man beside me understands that a photograph can record desire without giving him any right to it.
Perhaps that is precisely what makes the image so dangerous.
I can no longer pretend Alexander is the only one who wants to cross the distance between us.
When Lily returns and takes both our hands to lead us toward the ducks, my fingers brush his by accident.
Neither of us moves away immediately.
The photograph is Lily’s fault.
I am no longer certain I can blame her for the rest.