Because I changed it. Because I asked for space from the one person who never needed to be held at arm’s length, and gave time to the one person who has never used time well.
Millie isasleep when I check on her. Book open on her chest. Lamp still on. I mark her page, close the book, turn off the lamp. Kiss her forehead.
Jenna’s light is off.
I knock softly. “Jen?”
“I’m up.”
I open the door. She’s lying on her bed staring at the ceiling, earbuds out for once.
“How many?” I ask.
She knows what I mean. “He checked it ninetimes at the beach. Plus the call that ended the day. So ten total.”
I sit on the edge of her bed. She doesn’t pull away.
“Mom.”
“Yeah.”
“Mr. Paul doesn’t even look at his cell.”
“He has one.”
“I’ve never seen him look at it. Not once. Not at Millie’s reading. Not at dinner. Not when he’s on the dock working. He’s just... present.”
I don’t say anything. My sixteen-year-old just handed me the clearest piece of wisdom anyone has offered in the past week, and she did it while staring at her ceiling in the dark.
“Dad’s not going to change,” she says. “You know that, right?”
“Jen —”
“I’m not being mean. I’m being honest. He loves us. I believe that. But loving someone and showing up for them are two separate skills, and Dad only has one of them.”
Millie said something similar three days ago.Trying and doing aren’t the same.My children are handing me the truth in pieces, and I keep trying to assemble it into a picture thatdoesn’t hurt.
“I don’t need him to be perfect,” Jenna says. “I just need you to stop waiting for him to become somebody he’s not. Because while you’re waiting, somebody who’s already that person is sitting on a boat ten feet away wondering why you sent him away.”
I reach out. She lets me take her hand. We sit in the dark for a while.
“When did you get so wise?” I ask.
“Born this way. You just don’t usually notice.”
She squeezes my hand once, then lets go. Rolls over. Conversation finished.
I close her door. Walk through the narrow hallway. Past the dead coffee maker. Past Harold’s tomato on the windowsill. Past the fairy lights switch by the screen door.
I step out onto the deck. The night is warm. The marina is quiet. Paul’s boat sits in its slip, dark and still. No light in the porthole. No movement on deck.
But I know he’s in there. I know he’s awake, because Paul Spencer hasn’t slept well in eleven years and the last few nights haven’t helped.
I reach for the fairy light switch. Pause.
He counts the seconds. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. He lies in his cabin and counts how long it takes meto turn off the lights, and the knowing of that—the tender, ridiculous, devastating knowing of that—is what breaks me open.
I flip the switch. The lights go dark.
