He doesn’t look good. The shadows under his eyes look like bruises. His face is so drawn, his cheeks are hollowed. Now that I think about it, he’s been looking a little rough around the edges for a while.
When did he lose that healthy rower’s glow? He was perfectly fine when I walked in on him banging Delaney. It was sometime after that, but I can’t pinpoint exactly when. I try not to look him in the face now.
Pearl squats in front of him, poking his shoulder. Old, old memories of Mom listing over the couch arm, drooling onto the collar of her shirt, try to worm their way out of the back of my mind, but I squash them down. Still, my stomach sours. What are we doing? Adrian might be the one on the floor now, but I spent the night nearly falling off a princess bed. This is not okay.
“Daddy,” Pearl stage whispers, inching so close their noses almost touch.
He wakes up more calmly than I did. He actually smiles at Pearl as his eyelids flutter open, and my heart trips. He used to smile at me like that in the morning. Like he was happy to see me.
“Hey, Pearl. What am I doing down here?”
Pearl glances around, very seriously, as if there might be an explanation. “I don’t know.”
He maneuvers himself upright. “I just sat down for a minute.” He squints at the window down the hall with the morning sun streaming through. “I must’ve fallen asleep.”
“Why did you sit here?”
His gaze darts to me, sheepish. The expression is unlike him. “I didn’t want to go to bed, I guess.”
“I don’t like to go to bed neither,” Pearl says.
He stretches his arms over his head and cracks his neck. “Well, can’t sit here all day. Should we get breakfast?”
“Mommy?” Pearl looks to me.
I’m about to say we can’t, that Vera is bringing us breakfast, but I stop short. Things are too out of whack. Safe parents sleep in their own beds. They eat breakfast together in the dining room or at least the kitchen. Pearl’s a bright kid. She must sense the strain. The least I can do is pull myself together, eat with Adrian at the table like normal people, and act like everything is okay.
For her, it will be. I’ll make it so. Somehow.
Enough feeling sorry for myself. “Let’s get ready for the day and meet Daddy downstairs.”
Adrian flashes me a look. Not gratitude—I don’t think he’s capable of that—but something close. Relief, maybe? Or hope?
I don’t trust it. I gazed into that man’s face for years and believed with all my heart that he loved me. Whatever language he’s written in, I can’t read it. I slide my gaze to the right and pretend I didn’t see the look.
“I’ll grab a quick shower,” Adrian says, rising to his feet. He clearly wants to go, but Pearl’s standing right in front of him, barring his way. She’s not doing it on purpose, not quite. Her mind has just drifted, like a five-year-old’s does sometimes. She’s got her fingers in her mouth, and she’s staring neither here nor there.
“Let me just squeeze by,” he says to her gently, but maybe she’s groggier than she let on, because his request just doesn’t register.
If it were me, I’d scoop her up and set her down to the side or saybeep,beepand bump her playfully with my hip, but Adrian hesitates. It’s such a small thing—nothing, really—but it reminds me of yesterday at the playset when he waited for her to leap into his arms.
He always does that, doesn’t he? He waits for her to jump. Hugs her only after her arms are open. Lifts her only once she’s grabbing with her hands for uppies.
I give her shirt a little tug, and she automatically backs toward me, letting him pass.
“Twenty minutes.” He nods at me and strides away down the hall. He’s still wearing his dress shoes.
I take the girls back into the nursery and get them cleaned and changed. All the while, I conjure up memories of Adrian and the girls, starting in the hospital. He’d sit when he held them, every time, even with Winnie. He’s always been careful that way. Tentative. I attributed it to the fact that he’s a tall, muscular man. I thought his wariness was sweet.
I scroll through memories like pictures on my phone. So many outings—parks, the fair, zoos, children’s museums, the bubble show, the beach. Adrian lifting Pearl onto a carousel horse, holding her up to see the bears, carrying her on his shoulders when she was too tired to walk and too contrary to ride in her stroller.
Pearl chirping, clamoring, demanding, whining, “Up, Daddy. Up!”
He doesn’t mind carrying her. He’ll do it for hours without complaint. So why does he always wait to be asked? Pearl adores him. He knows that.
Right?
You can tell when someone loves you. Well, most people can.
