I get why this feels like a betrayal to her, and I’m sorry about it, but I still want to be honest. “I was unhappy there,” I say. “But there were two bright spots that made me happy in the middle of it all.”
Ivy wrinkles her nose at me again. “Me and Lukas?”
“Yep. You guys are everything to me.”
“Wewere,” Ivy says.
I shake my head. I want her to understand what I’m saying, but it’s not something I understood myself before I was a father. “You know, when your mom was pregnant with Luke, I worried that I wouldn’t be able to love him as much as I loved you.”
Ivy looks surprised. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Because I loved you so much, I couldn’t imagine ever loving another little person the same way.”
“But you did.” She doesn’t sound jealous or annoyed—more concerned on her brother’s behalf. Which I take as a good sign.
I nod. “Then Luke was born, and he was my kid, and I loved him just as much. But I didn’t love you any less, you know? And that’s when I understood that love isn’t finite. It isn’t some pie that gets divided between the people in your life, so that everyone gets less when someone else is added. Love is like a bright light. Everyone can sit under it equally.”
Ivy looks suspicious. “So it’s supposed to be okay for you and Mom to get back together, because you don’t love us any less.”
There’s a part of me that feels like an idiot saying all this, when I’m not even sure how things are going to work out with Kim and me. It’s so strange, being here in her world, a world she built without me, where I’m not sure how I fit, even if she promises that I will. I’m in this all the way, but she’s understandably reticent to dive into anything permanent. And I get that. It’s fine. It should be fine.
But it doesn’t take away the ache, and I can’t help but feel like I’m standing with my toes hanging over a steep cliff, one that goes down and down and down forever.
“You don’t agree,” I say.
Ivy sighs, but at least she’s not screaming at me. “Maybe it’s okay if you love each other. But that didn’t stop you from fighting all the time before.”
It’s true. Ivy clearly remembers more about the time before the divorce than I thought she did. Maybe even more than I thought she knew at the time. She was sharp, even as a six-year-old.
“I know you don’t have any reason to trust me on this,” I tell her. “But things are different now.”
“Different how?”
It’s an honest question, and she’s asking it almost without attitude, which makes me want to tell her the truth.
But the truth isn’t entirely mine to tell.
“I’m going to do my best to explain it to you,” I say, “because I think that you’re mature enough to handle it.”
Ivy shifts nervously. “Okay.”
I take a deep breath. “I left and filed for divorce because I thought I was making your mother miserable. She was so unhappy, and I thought that by leaving, I was giving her the opportunity to find something better.”
Ivy looks confused. “But if you made her unhappy before—”
“That’s the thing. I thought that’s what was happening, but it wasn’t true. Your mom was unhappy for reasons that had nothing to do with me.”
“Why was she unhappy?”
“That’s not mine to share with you.That’s something you need to hear from your mom, when she’s ready. But it didn’t have anything to do with me or you or Lukas.”
Ivy glares at her bright-colored comforter, and I can feel her shutting down again.
“But the difference,” I continue, “is that now I understand what was actually going on. And your mom understands that I never wanted to leave her, that if I’d known what was happening, I would have stayed.”
“So the divorce was Mom’s fault,” Ivy says.
“No,” I say quickly. “It wasn’t her fault at all.”
