Jenna comes out on the deck with her hair in a messy bun and a glass of orange juice. She sits next to me and doesn’t say anything for a minute, which is unusual for Jenna. Jenna usually has commentary. Jenna came out of the womb with commentary.
“You’re doing the face,” she says.
“What face?”
“The one where you stare at your coffee like it personally betrayed you.” She takes a sip of juice. “Something good happened, didn’t it?”
“Why would you assume —”
“Because you only make pancakes when you’re happy and trying to talk yourself out of it. ”
My sixteen-year-old is reading me like a book. A short book. A book with large print and obvious themes and a cover that saysWoman Stares at Coffee While Panicking About Happiness.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re scared.” She says it without judgment. Warm and direct, the way she says everything. My oldest child, who watched her father choose a hobby over her family and drew her own conclusions about what that meant. Jenna doesn’t miss things. She inherited my eyes and Matt’sstubborn jaw and somewhere along the way she developed the ability to see through every wall I build.
“Paul isn’t Dad,” she says.
I look at her.
“He’s not. I know that’s what you’re thinking, and he’s not.” She takes a sip of her juice. “Dad was in the garage because he wanted to be in the garage. Paul is on the dock because he’s taking care of things. For other people. That’s not the same.”
“When did you get so wise?”
“Shark tank.” She bumps my shoulder. “I saw it, Mom. All of it. For a long time.”
My throat closes. My sixteen-year-old saw her mother carrying everything alone, and I thought I was hiding it.
“He brought pickled okra to dinner,” Jenna says. “Like it was the most important thing in the world. Dad never brought anything.”
“Jenna —”
“I’m just saying. A man who shows up with condiments he didn’t even buy because he wanted to bringsomething—that’s not a man who’s going to disappear into a garage.”
She stands up, kisses the top of my head—when did she get tall enough to do that?—and goes insideto get ready for the day. The screen door closes behind her.
I sit with my coffee.
She’s right. I know she’s right. Paul isn’t Matt. Paul is the opposite of Matt in every way that matters—present, attentive, the kind of man who can’t sleep when someone’s light is out. A man who fixes things not because he’s obsessed with fixing things but because the people attached to those things matter to him.
But knowing something and believing it are different distances. Knowing is the dock. Believing is the open water. I’ve been standing on the dock since the divorce, afraid to push off because the last time I trusted the water, it let me down.
Millie appears with braids and a book under her arm. The quiet one, my observer, who sees everything and says nothing until the timing is maximally devastating.
“Morning, baby.”
“Morning.” She sits in the chair Jenna vacated and opens her book. She reads for a full minute before saying, without glancing up: “Paul’s curtain just moved.”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“I know. I was looking for you.” She turns a page. “He’s awake.”
I stare at my daughter. She doesn’t meet my gaze. She just reads her book with serene focus. This child is going to run a spy agency someday. Or a matchmaking service. Possibly both.
Aidan explodes out of the cabin like a human cannonball, wearing one shoe, no shirt, and swim trunks that are on backward.
“Is Mr. Paul coming to breakfast? He should come to breakfast. I want to tell him about how jellyfish have no brains. Did you know they have no brains, Mom? Zero brains. And they can still sting you. How is that fair?”
