18. Nora
NORA
Idon't answer Vivienne's text. This feels mature. Also, if I answer it, I might drive to Manhattan and throw my phone into the nearest decorative fountain, and I don't have time to become a headline.
Instead, I screenshot it. Then I send it to Daniel.
Me: Your mother has my number.
It takes him less than a minute to respond.
Daniel: I didn't give it to her.
Daniel: I'm sorry.
Daniel: Don't answer her. I'm handling it.
I stare at that last sentence. I'm handling it. Once, that would have made me feel safe. Daniel could handle things. That was never the problem. The problem was that he handled everything except me.
So I type:
Me: No. You are not handling June without me.
His reply comes fast.
Daniel: You're right.
Then:
Daniel: I meant I'll handle my mother. Not decisions about June.
Then:
Daniel: I won't let her contact you again.
Then:
Daniel: Unless you want her to.
I read the four messages in order. Then I read them again.
Bex leans against the prep table with a spoon in her hand because she has been stirring lemon glaze aggressively since Vivienne left. It has gone from glaze to emotionally overworked paste.
"Well?" she asks.
"He said you're right."
"Suspicious."
"Then clarified."
"Dangerous."
"Then said he won't let Vivienne contact me unless I want her to."
Bex points the spoon at me. "That one can live."
I hate that I agree. And that I feel my shoulders lower a little. Not trust, not forgiveness, just the body responding to a door that didn't slam.
That night, after June is asleep and my mother has said the words legal protections so many times they no longer sound like English, I text Daniel.
Me: If you want to see June, we can try Tuesday at 4. Honey & Rye office. Thirty minutes. I'll be there.
My thumb hovers over send. My stomach twists. I send it before I can be brave or cowardly.
Daniel answers:
Daniel: Thank you.
Then:
Daniel: I'll be there at 3:55 and wait outside until you say to come in.
Five minutes early. Waiting outside. Not assuming the door opens because he arrived. This is basic. Pathetically basic. The bar is so low it is in a basement under another basement. Still, my eyes sting.
"Absolutely not," I whisper to myself.
June sighs in her sleep like she is disappointed in my management.
"Agreed."
Tuesday at 3:55, Daniel stands outside Honey & Rye with his hands in his coat pockets. I know because Bex checks through the front window every thirty seconds like a nosy security system.
"He's early," she reports.
"He said he would be."
"He is just standing there."
"Bex."
"Like a sad rich lamppost."
"Stop narrating."
"I can't."
June sits on the office rug with a shape sorter and the yellow star in one hand. She has decided the star belongs in every hole except the star-shaped one, which is either developmental exploration or stubbornness. Probably both.
At exactly four, I open the back office door and tell Bex she can send him in.
My heart starts behaving like it has been startled by fireworks.
This is absurd. Apparently the real test of character is letting your estranged husband sit on an office floor with your toddler and not crying into a box of invoice folders.
Daniel steps into the office like the room might reject him, and good. Rooms should have opinions. He wears dark jeans and a charcoal sweater under his coat. No suit. No tie. No billionaire shine. He looks tired and clean and careful.
His eyes go to June first, then to me.
"Hi," he says, not to me exactly. To the room. To the tiny person on the rug. To the woman who might ask him to leave.
June looks up, studies him for one second, then turns her back and bangs the yellow star against the circle hole. Hard. Something moves across Daniel's face. Not much. Enough.
He doesn't ask her to look at him. He doesn't say, Hey, sweetheart, like he has earned that word. He lowers himself to the floor across the rug from her and sits with his back against the file cabinet.
Daniel Welling, billionaire engineer, sitting on the floor of my bakery office beside a box of tax receipts and a basket of burp cloths I still use as emergency cleaning rags. It should feel satisfying. It mostly feels sad.
"She likes to work it out herself," I say.
Daniel nods. "Okay."
June ignores him for eleven full minutes. I know because I count.
Daniel sits quietly. Not fake quietly, not look at me being patient quietly. Just quietly. He watches her try the star in the square hole. Watches her get mad. Watches her throw the star at the soft basket beside her. Watches her say, "No," to the entire concept of shapes.
"Fair," he says under his breath.
June looks at him, and Daniel freezes. I freeze. Bex freezes outside the cracked door because she is listening like a criminal.
June points at the shape sorter. "No."
Daniel nods solemnly. "No."
She stares at him. Then she goes back to the star.
That is the whole visit. Eleven minutes of ignoring. One shared no. Seventeen more minutes of Daniel sitting on the floor while June doesn't give him even one crumb of affection.
At 4:29, I say, "That's enough for today."
Daniel gets up immediately. No flinch. No argument. No one more minute, Nora.
He looks at June. "Bye, June."
She doesn't look up. He absorbs that too. Then he looks at me. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me like I gave you a gift."
His throat moves. "Okay."
He leaves. I hate how hard it is to watch him go.
The second visit is worse. Not because Daniel does anything wrong. That is the problem. He does exactly what I ask. He texts when he arrives. He waits outside. He comes in when I say.
He brings nothing. No toy. No bracelet. No tiny designer coat from a children's store where a onesie costs more than my first car. I told him not to bring gifts, and he listens. Again. Rude.
June sits in the corner of the office eating banana pieces from a silicone bowl shaped like a bear. Daniel sits on the rug. The bowl fascinates him.
"How many pieces?" he asks.
"As many as she eats before she starts feeding them to the rabbit."
He looks at the stuffed rabbit beside June. "That's a rule?"
"Everything is a rule until it isn't."
He nods like I have given him a structural code update. "Okay."
"No whole grapes. Blueberries quartered. Strawberries small. Lemon bars are a crime my mother commits when I'm not watching."
"Okay."
"If she signs more, she's lying. She always wants more. She doesn't always need more."
"Okay."
"If she says up and you pick her up immediately, she will respect you less."
His mouth almost moves. "That sounds like you."
The words land between us, soft and dangerous. For one second, the office is not an office. It is twelve years of him knowing me too well. My chest tightens.
"Don't," I say.
He lowers his eyes. "Sorry."
June throws a banana piece at him. It hits his knee. Daniel looks down at it, then at her. "Thank you."
June says, "No."
"Understood."
I turn my head before Daniel can see my mouth twitch.
The third visit is in my parents' living room because Honey & Rye has a catering order that eats the whole afternoon and my mother says, "If Daniel Welling can build a tower in Singapore, he can survive your father explaining the remote."
Daniel arrives at exactly five. My father opens the door. There is a long silence.
Then my father says, "Shoes off."
"Yes, sir."
"We are not sir people."
"Frank."
"That will do."
June is in the living room with blocks. Daniel sits on the floor again, because apparently he has accepted that his new social position is rug-level. My father sits in his recliner with the newspaper open. He doesn't read a word.
June builds a tower of three blocks. Daniel watches like she has invented load-bearing construction. She knocks it over. He smiles. Not big. Not for me. For her. It hurts.
"Again?" he asks.
June ignores him.
My father clears his throat. "She likes when you put the red one on the bottom."
Daniel looks at him. "Thank you."
My father grunts. This is basically a blessing from the pope.
Five visits in, Daniel fixes the cabinet. It is the cabinet under the Honey & Rye office sink, the one with the loose hinge that makes the door sag to the left. Daniel notices it when June tries to pull herself up on the handle.
"That hinge is loose," he says.
Every cell in my body tightens, because I know this shape. Daniel sees a problem. Daniel solves a problem. Daniel becomes necessary. Then everyone is grateful, and the original wound gets wallpapered with competence.
"It's fine," I say.
He glances at the cabinet, then back at me. "Okay."
That's all. He doesn't fix it. He sits on the floor and lets June ignore him for another twenty minutes.
The next morning, there is a small paper bag on the back step at Honey & Rye with a receipt taped to it. Two replacement hinges. One screwdriver. One note.
Daniel: For whoever you want to fix it. Not me unless you ask.
Bex looks over my shoulder. "I hate him."
"No, you don't."
"I hate this version of him for making it harder to hate him."
"Same."
"Deeply inconsiderate."
Three days later, after the cabinet door falls off in my hand because apparently my life enjoys symbolism, I text him.
Me: Can you fix the cabinet tomorrow during your visit?
Daniel: Yes.
Daniel: Do you want me to bring tools, or use what's there?
Me: Use what's there.
Daniel: Okay.
He fixes the cabinet the next day while June naps in the office pack-and-play and I sit at the desk answering emails.
He is quiet. No speech. No memory about all the things he should have fixed before.
Just his hands tightening screws, replacing hinges, testing the swing of the door until it closes clean.
I try not to watch his hands. I fail.
When he's done, he puts the old hinges in the trash, wipes the floor where a little dust fell, and says, "It's fixed."
"Thank you."
His eyes flick to mine. "You're welcome."
No extra. No see, I can help. No I should have done this years ago. He leaves at the end of the visit when I say, "That's all for today." He doesn't look happy about it. He goes anyway.
That's the grovel, I am learning. Not the apology. The going anyway.
The sixth visit, June hands him the yellow star. I nearly drop a tray of mini quiches. So does Bex, and she isn't even holding one.
Daniel goes still as June stands in front of him, star clutched in one sticky hand, staring at him like she is deciding whether he has the intellectual capacity to participate.
"Da," she says.
The room stops. My heart stops. Daniel looks like the word has taken him apart.
No. No, no, no. Not because she said it. She says da for duck, door, dog, and once for a sock, because language is chaos and June enjoys power.
But Daniel doesn't know that. He looks like the word has hit him in the chest and gone straight through, and I could save him. I could explain quickly. It doesn't mean what you think. I don't. Not right away.
He swallows. His hand shakes when he reaches out, palm open, not taking. June drops the star into it.
"Thank you," he says. His voice is wrecked.
June turns around and walks away. Efficient queen.
Daniel sits there with the star in his palm, staring at it like it's a religious object. I let him have three seconds. Then I say, because I'm not cruel enough to let the misunderstanding live longer than that, "She calls ducks da."
He closes his eyes, and the pain on his face changes shape. Not smaller. Different. "Okay," he says.
"And dogs."
He nods.
"And the dishwasher."
His mouth trembles once. "That seems fair."
Bex makes a sound that might be a laugh or a sob. Same, honestly.
That night, June gets a fever. Of course she does. It starts at seven-thirty, right after dinner. One minute she is squishing pasta between her fingers with deep artistic commitment, and the next she is hot against my neck and furious about being alive.
My mother says, "Teeth."
My father says, "Should we call someone?"
I say, "It's probably teeth."
Then June whimpers. Not cries. Whimpers. Tiny and wrong. Every parent has a sound they can't survive. That one is mine.