Go to sleep. She did. Or at least she stopped talking, which he understood was approximately the same thing for someone who kept going until she stopped. He had his own difficult period in August when the workshop's electrical panel finally gave out completely. Not the slow deterioration he'd been managing, but an abrupt failure that shut the shop down for 11 days while he waited for an electrician and dealt with the insurance and rescheduled four active commissions and spent more money than he had available without going into a reserve he'd been building for Maisie's school costs.
He was short with Maisie once during those 11 days and short with Serena on the phone and he knew it and hated it and didn't stop it as quickly as he should have. Serena didn't offer to fix it financially. He understood later that she had made that decision deliberately, that she had recognized without him having to say it, that offering money would have changed the architecture of what they were, and she had chosen not to do that, even though the money was entirely available, and the problem was entirely solvable by it. She offered instead to spend the evenings he was most stressed at his apartment. Cooking dinner, she was not a naturally gifted cook.
She was competent, but not instinctive, and to take Maisie to the library on two of the afternoons when Ethan needed to deal with the electrician, and to stay out of his way when he needed to be in his own head without anyone in it. She read the situation and adjusted to it without being asked, and that was a more significant thing than money would have been. " How do you know what to do?" Maisie asked her one evening during that August stretch. They were at the library waiting for the section Maisie needed to open up. "
What do you mean?" Serena said with my dad, Maisie said, "When he's being difficult, how do you know what to do?" Serena looked at the 9-year-old beside her with the expression she had developed specifically for conversations with Maisie, which was different from any other expression in her range more honest. Somehow, because Maisie didn't respond to anything less, and Serena had figured this out within the first hour. " I watch him," Serena said the same way he watches things.
I try to see what's actually there instead of what I'm afraid is there. Maisie considered this. What are you afraid is there? That he needs space and I'm in it, Serena said. Or that he needs company and I've given him space instead.
It's mostly a matter of guessing right. Do you guess right? Probably 60% of the time, Serena said. 40% I get it wrong and I adjust. Maisie thought about this.
That's pretty good. She said most people don't adjust. No. Serena said they don't. Dad adjusts.
Maisie said it's one of his best things. I know. Serena said, "That's one of the reasons I like him." Maisie looked at her with the evaluating expression, "One that had been present since their first meeting, and that Ethan had described to Serena once as the inspection." " Do you love him?"
Maisie asked. Serena was quiet for a moment. " Yes," she said. " I do." Maisie nodded as though this had confirmed something she had already suspected. "
Okay," she said. " Okay," Serena said. " I just wanted to know," Maisie said. " I'm going to look at the books now." Serena sat with that for a moment.
the complete directness of it, the question asked and answered and moved past without ceremony, and thought that Maisie had learned something from her father that most adults spent decades trying to learn, that the important things were worth asking about plainly, and that the answer, whatever it was, was better than the not knowing. Ethan learned about the library conversation three weeks later who from Maisie who mentioned it the way she mentioned most things as information to be shared rather than a significant event to be processed. He was driving her to school. The old truck making its particular noise in the September morning and she said Serena told me she loves you with the tone of someone reporting a weather forecast. Ethan was quiet for a moment.
When did she say that? He asked. In August at the library I asked her. He drove for a moment. You asked her.
I wanted to know," Maisie said. So I asked. He thought about Serena fielding that question from a 9-year-old in a library and answering it honestly. He thought about the cost of that honesty not to Maisie, who had received it cleanly and moved on, but to Serena, who didn't say things like that easily or often or without meaning them at every level simultaneously. That was a personal question to ask, he said.
I know, Maisie said. I thought she could handle it. He almost said something else and then didn't. They arrived at the school and Maisie hopped out with her backpack and said bye. In the way that covered a large amount of feeling in a very small word and he drove back toward the workshop thinking about a woman who had answered a question from his daughter in a library in August and hadn't told him about it because she was not the kind of person who reported her own vulnerability like a credential.
He called her at noon. Maisie told me, he said when she picked up a brief pause. I thought she might. Serena said. I wasn't sure when.
You didn't tell me. He said, "No," she said. " Why not?" " A pause longer than the first." " Because I wanted to say it when it was the right moment," she said. "
Not on the phone. Not when you were stressed about the workshop. Not as I didn't want it to be a thing I said and then we had to manage what it meant." She paused. I was waiting for the right moment to just say it in the right way.