Enormous and judgmental. His name is Dosstop. He sits directly in front of the refrigerator and stares at me like I owe him money. Nathan exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Sounds like a solid cat. He really is. How's the horse phase escalating? She informed me at dinner that horses have feelings and I need to take that more seriously.
She's not wrong. That's what I said. A pause. Then you're a good dad, Nathan.
He sat with that for a second, set the phone face down on the counter, picked it up again. Thank you. That means something coming from you. He meant it.
He didn't entirely mean to mean it, but there it was. Her reply took longer this time. When it came, it was just four words. I owe you more.
He didn't know what to do with that. So, he said good night. And she said good night. And he went to bed and lay in the dark, thinking about how a woman he hadn't spoken to in 6 months had somehow become the last voice in his head before sleep.
He told himself it was just residual guilt on her end. She'd admitted she believed Sandra's version without questioning it. This was her making peace with that. That was all.
He almost believed it. He was getting better at almost believing things. The next week, she called, not texted, called on a Sunday afternoon. He was in the backyard watching Lily attempt to teach the neighbor's dog a trick it had no interest in learning.
He picked up on the second ring. I have a situation, Clare said, skipping hello entirely. Okay, I'm at IKEA. Okay, I drove here with every intention of buying a bookshelf.
I did not account for the fact that a flat pack bookshelf does not fit in a Honda Civic. He pressed his lips together. Clare, I know you went to IKEA alone without a truck. I didn't think about the truck part until I was looking at it on the cart.
What did you think was going to happen? I was optimistic. A pause. I'm usually optimistic about spatial reasoning, and I am always wrong.
Nathan, I need a truck. He looked at Lily, who had given up on the dog and was now just running in circles for her own reasons. He looked at his watch. He looked at the sky.
I'll be there in 40 minutes, he said. Don't buy anything else while you wait. I already bought a lamp, Clare. It was on sale.
He brought Lily. He couldn't not. His mother had left an hour ago and there was nobody else. He figured it would be fine.
He figured wrong, but in the best possible way. When they pulled into the IKEA parking lot, Lily spotted Clare before Nathan did. She was out of the truck before he'd fully stopped running across the lot with the complete physical abandon of a seven-year-old who has identified a target. Clare.
Clare, we have a dog now. Well, not ours. It's the Pattersons, but we're borrowing it sometimes, and I'm learning about horses. And Dad says, "I can maybe take lessons." Clare crouched down to Lily's level like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And caught her by the shoulders and said, "Okay, slow down. I need to hear every single part of this." And Lily grabbed her hand and started over from the beginning, fully committed. Nathan stood back and watched. There was something in his chest that he identified reluctantly as ache.
Not bad ache, the kind that comes from seeing something that used to be normal and realizing how much you missed it without knowing you were missing it. He picked up the bookshelf. He also picked up the lamp, which Clare had additionally supplemented with two throw pillows and a plant she claimed she needed urgently. "You said, don't buy anything else," he reminded her, loading the last of it.
"The plant spoke to me." Plants don't speak. This one does. It said, "Clare, you need me." From the back seat, Lily said solemnly, "Plants do have feelings, Dad. Like horses." Nathan looked at Clare over the roof of the truck.
She looked back at him. She was biting her lip to keep from laughing. "Both of you," he said, "are a lot," Lily giggled. Clare finally let the laugh out.
And Nathan, against his better judgment, against every reasonable argument he'd made to himself in the last 10 days, felt the knot in his chest loosen just slightly, just enough to be dangerous. He helped her carry everything up to her apartment. Third-floor walk up, the kind of building that had good bones and needed new windows. Lily ran ahead and immediately made friends with Doorstop, who apparently had strong opinions about children and expressed them by flopping dramatically onto his back for a belly rub.
"He never does that," Clare said, watching Lily crouched over the cat with complete reverence. "She has a gift," Nathan said. "Animals and adults who should know better." Clare glanced at him. "Is that category for me or for you?" He set the bookshelf box against the wall.
You bought a lamp and two pillows on an emergency furniture run. You figure it out. She smiled. Then she disappeared into the kitchen and came back with two glasses of iced tea without asking if he wanted any, which was the kind of thing that either meant someone was being automatically hospitable or automatically comfortable with you.
And he was trying not to examine which one it was. Lily fell asleep on the couch. the drive, the excitement, the weight of Doorstop, who had arranged himself on her legs like he'd been doing it for years. Nathan sat in the one armchair Clare owned, and Clare sat on the floor with her back against the couch, and they talked quietly so as not to wake Lily. "She's extraordinary," Clare said, looking at her.
"She is. She looks like you. She's got your stubborn set to her jaw. She's got Sandra's eyes. silence.
Not hostile, just honest. How is that? Clare asked, seeing Sandra in her. Does it?