Chapter 14
The door had closed an hour earlier but the house still sounded like someone was about to walk back through it.
I sat on the couch in the living room and my dad sat in the armchair across from the stone fireplace. The television was off. The patterned rug between us looked too big without her things on it. Neither of us had moved since her car backed down the gravel drive. The warm light coming through the front windows hadn't changed. The house was exactly the same and completely different.
My dad stared at the fireplace. The framed photos on the mantel were still there, his and mine from before, the ones that had always been there before she moved in. The air felt heavy, like we were both holding our breath.
He cleared his throat. "You okay?" he said.
I nodded. My breathing sounded loud in the quiet.
We listened to the cabin settle. The wooden beams ticked. Somewhere down the hallway a closet door clicked against its frame from the draft she had let in when she left.
After a while I started noticing the small empty places. The corner by the hallway where her daughter's pink backpack always sat after school was bare, the floorboards a little lighter where it had blocked the sun. The throw blanket she kept folded on the end of the couch was gone. On the coffee table, the coaster where the woman always set her mug had a faint ring, but the mug wasn't there.
I hadn't realized how many of our things had become theirs in the last year until they weren't there anymore.
My dad leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his hands together. His silver watch caught the light.
"I need to tell you something," he said. He didn't look at me at first. He looked at the rug, at the fireplace. "Your stepmom isn't coming back tonight. Maybe not at all. That conversation we had, when I told her to leave if she wanted you to leave. She took me up on it."
I swallowed. "Is she mad at you?"
"She's hurt. I'm hurt too." He finally looked at me. His eyes were tired. "This might mean the marriage is over. I know that's a lot to hear. I want you to hear it from me, not just figure it out from the quiet."
The word marriage hung there. I felt my stomach drop. I had wanted him to pick me, and he had, right there in front of all of us when he said this is his father's house, not hers. I had wanted that so bad it felt like I couldn't breathe. Now that it had happened, I felt guilty for wanting it.
"Is it because of me?" I asked. My voice was small.
He shook his head quickly. "No. Don't do that. This wasn't you. This was about what I will and won't do in my own house. I told you this is your home. I meant that."
"But if I wasn't here, she'd still be here," I said. "If I looked at her daughter different or something, maybe she wouldn't feel uncomfortable."
"You didn't do anything wrong," he said. He said it firmly, like he had said it that day in the hallway when I said Dad, that's not true. I didn't do anything. "A kid feeling uncomfortable in a new house isn't your fault. Her mother handling it the way she did, that wasn't your fault either."
He stood up and came to sit on the couch beside me. He didn't put his arm around me right away. He just sat close enough that our shoulders almost touched. The couch dipped under his weight.
We sat there for a long time watching the empty fireplace. It was daytime and we didn't need a fire, but the stone was cold without it. The room felt too large for just two people.
"It's quiet," I said.
"Yeah," he said. His voice was rough. "It is."
I looked at the mantel again, at the photos of just us, and for the first time I didn't feel proud that we had won the house back. I felt the cost of it. The framed photos were the same as they'd always been, but the spaces where her photos had been were empty. The nail holes were still there.
May you like
My dad put his hand on my shoulder then. His grip was steady. "We're okay," he said. "You and me, we're okay. That's what matters tonight."
I nodded, but I kept looking at the empty corner where the backpack had been, at the faint ring on the table, at the quiet house that was ours again and felt less like winning than I thought it would.
