Chapter 9: Saturday Morning at Ten
Ethan arrived at nine fifty-eight with a paper bag from the bakery on Wabash that Liam had somehow already identified as his favorite, despite having been there only once.
I opened the door.
He held up the bag.
"Croissants," he said.
"And one bear claw because Caleb told me he doesn't like croissants."
"He's five.
Last week he didn't like the color blue."
"I wasn't going to risk it."
I stepped back and let him in.
The boys descended on him immediately — Noah wrapping both arms around his leg, Caleb presenting the stuffed bear for introduction, Liam hanging back for exactly four seconds before his composure broke and he ran at his father like the other two.
Ethan sat down on the floor of my living room in his jacket and let all three of them climb on him.
He didn't seem to mind the jacket.
I made coffee and watched from the kitchen doorway.
After a while he looked up and found me watching.
"I've been thinking," he said.
"About?"
"About the fact that I have three five-year-old sons and I don't know their teachers' names.
Or what they're scared of.
Or what they want to be when they grow up."
"Liam wants to be a paleontologist.
Noah wants to be a garbage truck driver.
Caleb changes his answer every day but this week it's a chef."
Ethan looked at Caleb.
"A chef?"
Caleb nodded seriously.
"I'm going to make croissants."
"He's never made croissants," I said.
"I'm going to learn," Caleb said, with the absolute certainty of someone who has never attempted anything and therefore has no reason to doubt himself.
Ethan laughed.
It was the first time I had heard him laugh in five years, and it sounded the same as I remembered — surprised, like it caught him off guard.
He looked up at me again.
"I want to be in their lives," he said.
"Properly.
Not every other weekend.
Not a legal arrangement.
I want to know their teachers' names." He paused.
"I know I don't have the right to ask for that.
I know I wasn't there.
I'm not asking you to forgive me for that.
I'm just telling you what I want."
I came around the counter and sat down across from him on the floor, my back against the couch.
"You weren't there because your mother made sure you didn't know to be there," I said.
"That's not the same as choosing to leave."
"I still should have asked more questions."
"Yes," I said.
"You should have."
He nodded.
He didn't argue.
He was doing that less and less — the thing he used to do, where he would absorb a difficult truth and then quietly deflect it.
He was just sitting with it now.
Noah had fallen asleep against his arm.
Ethan looked down at him with an expression I recognized from the garden — that careful, frightened tenderness.
"What do we do now?" he said.
"We figure it out," I said.
"Slowly.
Without your mother in the room."
He looked across at me.
"She called me last night," he said.
"I didn't answer."
"I know," I said.
"She called me too."
He raised an eyebrow.
"I didn't answer either," I said.
Something in his face settled.
Not relief exactly.
Something quieter.
Liam climbed off his father's lap, walked to the kitchen, and came back with the bear claw on a plate, which he presented to Caleb with great ceremony.
"You said you wanted it," Liam said.
"I changed my mind," Caleb said.
"I want a croissant now."
Liam looked at the ceiling.
Then he sat down and ate the bear claw himself.
Ethan caught my eye.
May you like
We didn't say anything.
We didn't need to.
