Pearl nods. “Like Daddy.”
Cora darts me a glance. “Yes. Daddy likes space.”
“But he’s not lonely,” Pearl says with total confidence.
Cora twists to look at Pearl. Or to avoid looking at me. “No. He has us. Just like the little tree has the whole tree farm.”
Pearl is satisfied, and she turns her attention to Winnie, sleeping in the car seat beside her with her head tipped back like a drunk. “Winnie’s cheeks are pink.”
“So are yours,” Cora says.
“And yours, too,” Pearl observes.
“And mine,” Cora agrees.
“Daddy, are your cheeks pink?”
“Are they?” I ask Cora, presenting my face for inspection, daring her to meet my eye.
She tries to keep her expression disinterested, but she flushes under her pink cheeks when our eyes lock. “Yes, Daddy’s are, too.”
She’s not blanking me out anymore. I still affect her. Something in my chest unwinds for the first time in weeks.
Cora gets the kids settled while I doublecheck the job I’ve done strapping the tree to the roof. Once we’re on our way, Cora puts on the holiday radio station, and the car grows quiet. Pearl drifts off to sleep. Cora watches the scenery go by out the passenger side window, her mouth tightening as she remembers her troubles.
More flurries begin to fall, and Pearl’s words come back to me.Daddy likes space. But he’s not lonely. The way she said it, “space,” she must’ve talked to Cora about this before. Was she asking why I work so much? Why I’m not the one who takes care of her, day to day, like Cora does?
I hadn’t planned it this way. Iwanteda family. I was going to be different from my father. My kids weren’t going to raise each other.
Was it just easier to fall into the usual roles? Cora’s always been happy to be a stay-at-home mother. I’m very, very good at my job. Isn’t this just what men and women do when they get married? Divide the labor?
Or maybe—maybe Cora and I are both hiding. She’s sheltering in this marriage from a life that’s been a shitstorm, and I’m doing the marriage with one foot out the door, hiding behind my work, because I’m incapable of doing what she does so naturally.
Iamlonely.
And I don’t like space. I’m just bad at being human.
It’s a helluva thing to confront while driving your family back to your beautiful home with a Christmas tree tied to the roof.
The mulled wine that Vera has waiting for us doesn’t make it feel much better.
Neither does eating dinner together without incident for the first time in weeks.
But after Cora and the girls are asleep, I have Martinez come up to the house to keep an eye on things, and I drive back to the tree farm. I wake the guy who runs the place, and after his dogs bark my head off and he bitches me out, he takes my money and lets me borrow a saw.
It takes a while to find Charlie Brown. Honestly, I’m not one hundred percent sure that Idofind him, exactly, but I do carry a spindly-ass Douglas fir over my shoulder back to the Range Rover.
I let him ride shotgun back to the house and set him in a stock pot of water in the foyer so Pearl sees him first thing when she comes downstairs tomorrow.
I can’t say I feelgoodafter I shower, crawl into bed, and drag Cora into my arms. Nothing’s solved. I’m still scared as shit about what’s going on in Cora’s head.
But, yeah, I do feel better.
I stickclose to Cora’s side for the next several days as I try to decide what to do. We go ice skating at the local rink and visit the holiday train display at the fire department.
On Sunday, we hang around the house. Cora strings popcorn into a garland while I decorate the trees with the ornaments she’s collected for us. Pearl doesn’t have the manual dexterity to wield the needle, so she helps by holding the popcorn and lecturing her mom about how popcorn isn’t safe for little kids, but next year, she’ll be big enough to use the needle and eat the popcorn.
And then, on Monday, Logan texts me that he hasinformation about Baltimore. Coincidentally, Cora was about to take the girls to story hour at the library, so I send them along without me. Martinez and Johnson are with them with instructions not to let them out of their sight.
