She was 32. The pen stopped moving. "Malcolm," Vanessa said quietly. "I'm not telling you for sympathy," he said. "I'm telling you because if your family asks about her, about Lily, I want you to know the real answers.
I won't manufacture something softer." She was quiet for a moment, then she set the pen down entirely. She was 32. Yes. And Lily was three.
Three and a half. Vanessa looked at him not the way she usually looked at him with that executive assessment, that constant quiet calculation, but the way a person looks at another person when they're suddenly seeing them clearly for the first time. How do you do it? She asked. And for once, the question didn't sound like a CEO asking about a process.
It sounded like someone asking because they genuinely desperately wanted to understand. One morning, he said simply. Then the next one, she picked up her pen, but she didn't write anything else for a long moment. Thursday evening, Malcolm packed a single weekend bag. He packed the navy blazer he wore to church on the occasions he actually made it to church.
He packed the charcoal dress shirt that Lily once said made him look like a TV dad, but like the good kind. He packed his good shoes, the ones he'd bought for a client dinner 2 years ago and worn maybe four times since. He sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the room. It was a good room, a quiet room. He had spent four years learning to be comfortable in the quiet.
At first, the silence after Diane had been the worst thing he'd ever endured. A physical presence heavy and airless occupying every corner. Then it had become bearable, then manageable, then slowly something he had carefully structured his life around. He liked his life. That was the truth.
It was small and it was sometimes lonely in the way that single parenthood is lonely, bone deep, and relentless. But it was his. He had built it deliberately. He had kept it clean. He thought about his mother's question.
Does she see you clearly? He thought about the photograph on Vanessa's shelf, the laughing woman who didn't exist in that office anymore. He thought about the word she had used emotionally dishonest and how she'd said it in a boardroom, like it was the most natural thing in the world, like she had been saying it her whole life, like she was the kind of woman who demanded honesty from a slide presentation, but had never once let anyone inside the truth of her. He thought about two days. It's only two days.
He turned off the light. Friday morning, he dropped Lily at his mother's. Lily had been thrilled not about the trip. She didn't know the details, only that dad was going on a work thing, but about the weekend itself, which her grandmother had already preloaded with activities, including a trip to the botanical garden, a movie, and what Patricia described as educational baking, which in Malcolm's experience meant very little education and a significant amount of sugar. "Call me every morning," he told Lily, crouching to her level in his mother's front doorway.
I know, Dad. And if you need me, you'll come get me immediately. I know. She wrapped her arms around his neck with the total physical commitment of a 7-year-old squeezing harder than her size suggested possible. "You worry too much.