Chapter 12 - Apartment Hallway, Not the Honeymoon
Dad didn't carry me out of that venue like a groom. He carried my little white duffel and held my hand the whole way to the truck. The parking lot was still full of cars with ribbons on them and I could hear the highway past the trees. It was getting dark and the air had that cool smell it gets after the sun goes down in early summer.
I sat in my booster in the back and watched his eyes in the rearview. He didn't talk much on the drive. He'd put my flower girl dress in the trunk still on its hanger and let me change in the little family bathroom by the office into my pink leggings and t-shirt I'd worn that morning. My bow was still in my hair but it was crooked.
"This is still our night," he said at a red light, looking back at me. "We're just going home instead."
When we got to our building, he killed the engine and came around to get my door. He didn't rush me up the stairs. Our apartment was on the second floor and the hallway always had that faint smell of old carpet cleaner and someone cooking down the hall. Our door was the gray one with the chipped paint near the knob. He unlocked it and pushed it open for me first.
Everything was exactly the same. I dropped my duffel and ran before he even turned the light on all the way. My room was the second door on the left. My bed was still unmade from that morning, my stuffed rabbit facedown on the pillow where I'd left him, my dresser with the stickers I wasn't allowed to peel off. I touched the bedspread to make sure it was real. I opened my closet and saw my clothes hanging there, my shoes lined up underneath.
"Daddy, it's still here," I said.
He was standing in the doorway, his tux jacket over his arm, his bow tie loose around his collar.
"Of course it is," he said. His voice was tired but flat, steady. "This is your room, Emily. It doesn't get packed up because somebody else had a bad day."
I climbed onto my bed and sat cross-legged. He came and sat next to me. He didn't sit like he was visiting. He sat like he lived there.
He put his hand on my knee. "Listen to me, okay?" he said. "Whatever happens with the wedding, with her, this apartment is yours and mine. It's home. There's no new life that replaces you. You don't have to earn your spot here."
I nodded fast because I wanted to believe it right then and not later.
"Do you mean I'm not leaving forever?" I asked.
"I mean you're not leaving at all," he said. "Not for a nanny we never hired, not for anyone's mother, not for anyone. If anybody moves in here someday, it's because you are safe with them first. Not the other way around."
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and the screen lit up his face. I saw her name. It said Claire.
He read it and his mouth tightened a little. He didn't hide the screen from me, but he didn't read it out loud right away either. He breathed in through his nose.
"She wants to come talk," he said after a second. He looked at me, not just at the phone. "She's asking if I can meet her downstairs alone, without you upstairs. She says we need to fix this just between us."
I felt my stomach drop the way it did on the aisle. I grabbed a little fistful of my bedspread.
"Are you going to go?" I asked.
He was quiet for one beat, then he shook his head. He typed with his thumbs right there in front of me.
"No," he said as he typed. "I'm telling her not tonight, and not without you in the picture. If she wants to talk, it happens where you're safe and where we have the truth in front of us. I'm not doing a private deal in the hallway while you're upstairs wondering what we decided about you."
He pressed send and set the phone face-down on my dresser.
I stared at it. "What did you say exactly?"
He told me word for word. "I said: Not tonight alone. Emily is home with me. We will talk when we have a clear, calm time with everything on the table, and Emily's safety comes first. Not like this."
My shoulders dropped a little. The apartment was so quiet I could hear the fridge humming in the kitchen.
He stood up and pulled my rabbit upright on my pillow. "We are not deciding anything about anyone moving in until we have the clear truth," he said. "We have that note, we have what the venue wrote down. We are going to sit at the table tomorrow morning, flatten that paper out, read it together, and figure out what it really says and who wrote it. No more guessing. No more whispers at a wedding."
"At our table?" I asked.
"At our kitchen table," he said. "Just you and me. Coffee for me, milk for you. No doors we have to peek through."
May you like
I slid off the bed and followed him into the living room. He turned on the lamp and our couch was still there with the blanket folded the way I liked it. He hung his tux jacket over a chair like it was just a jacket now, not part of a wedding. He sat down and patted the cushion next to him and I climbed up close to his side.
The phone buzzed again once on the dresser in my room, but he didn't get up to check it. He just kept his arm around me and we sat there listening to the building settle, home still being home around us.
