He nodded. He didn’t argue.
Lily tugged on my sleeve. I knelt down beside her again.
“Can we make cookies together?” she asked. “Sometime? Even if you’re still mad at Daddy?”
I smiled. It was the first real smile I’d had all day.
“Absolutely,” I said.
I kissed her forehead.
Then I picked up my bag and walked toward the door.
I left Ethan standing in my father’s living room beside the little girl I was already ready to love. Even though I wasn’t ready to forgive her father.
Not yet.
I stayed with Sarah for three weeks.
She has a tiny one-bedroom apartment in Uptown with a cat named Pickles who hates everybody except me. I slept on her pullout couch. Pickles slept on my feet.
I went to work. I came home. I watched bad TV. I didn’t answer Ethan’s texts. He sent one every night at nine o’clock.
Thinking of you. I’m sorry. No pressure.
Every single night. At nine o’clock exactly.
I didn’t answer Dad’s calls either. He called every morning. I let them go to voicemail. He left the same message every time.
It’s Dad. I love you. I’m sorry, kiddo. Call me when you’re ready.
On the fourth day, Sarah sat down on the end of the pullout couch with two glasses of wine.
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
So I talked. I told her everything. Lily. Megan. Walter, the fake friend from the teachers’ union. The bathroom floor three years ago. The eleven voicemails.
When I was done, Sarah was quiet for a long time.
“That’s a lot,” she said finally.
“That’s a lot.”
“Can I say something you’re not going to like?”
“You’re going to anyway.”
“Your dad’s an idiot,” Sarah said. “Ethan’s an idiot. They’re both enormous idiots. They should both be ashamed of themselves. That whole thing with the fake friend is insane.” She sipped her wine. “But I don’t think either of them is a bad person.”
“I didn’t say they were bad people.”
“I know. I’m just saying it out loud. So you hear it.” Sarah looked at me. “Your dad thought he was protecting you from the worst pain you’d ever had. And Ethan thought he was protecting you from finding out he’d been a coward. They were both wrong. But they were wrong because they love you. Not because they don’t.”
I looked down into my wine.
“That’s what makes it so hard,” I said.
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “That’s always what makes it hard.”
The only person I did talk to during those three weeks was Lily.
It started on the second Saturday. I was at the grocery store when my phone rang. It was an unknown number.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Claire! It’s Lily!”
I almost dropped my basket of apples.
“Lily? How did you get my number?”
“Grandpa wrote it on the fridge. In case of emergencies.” There was a pause. “This isn’t really an emergency. I just wanted to say hi.”
I stood in the produce section and laughed.
“Hi, Lily.”
“Hi. Ruby says hi too.”
“Tell Ruby I said hi back.”
“Okay. She says thank you.” Another pause. “Are you still mad at Daddy?”
I closed my eyes.
“A little bit,” I said honestly.
“Okay,” Lily said. “That’s okay. I’m mad at him sometimes too. Like when he makes me eat broccoli.”
I laughed again. Somebody’s grandmother gave me a funny look by the lettuce.
“Daddy cries sometimes,” Lily said. “At night. When he thinks I’m asleep. He’s really sad.”
My throat tightened.
“I’m sorry he’s sad,” I said.
“Me too.” She paused. “Can we still make cookies?”
“Yes,” I said. “We can still make cookies.”
We made cookies the next Saturday.
Just the two of us, in Dad’s kitchen. Dad took Ethan out to a hardware store so they’d be out of the house. I think it was Dad’s idea. I didn’t ask.
We made chocolate chip with too many chocolate chips. Lily stood on a stepstool at the counter in a tiny apron that said GRANDPA’S LITTLE HELPER. She got flour everywhere, on the counter, on the floor, in her hair, and in mine.
While we waited for the first batch to bake, she sat on the counter swinging her legs and told me about her mom.
“Mommy liked yellow,” she said. “Everything was yellow. Her car was yellow. Our kitchen in Indianapolis was yellow. She had yellow rain boots.”
“That sounds really nice.”
“She made pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse.” Lily looked down at her hands. “Daddy tries, but his look like potatoes.”
I laughed.
“He burns one side, too,” I said. “Every time.”
“Every time!” Lily said, delighted. “You know that?”
“I’ve eaten his pancakes every Sunday for six years.”
Lily looked at me with her big brown eyes.
“Every Sunday?” she said. “Daddy comes here every Saturday. And then on Sunday he leaves really early.” She frowned. “Was that because of you? Because he had to go make you pancakes?”
My chest hurt.
“Yeah, sweetheart,” I said. “I think it was.”
Lily thought about that for a long time.
“So he was making pancakes for both of us,” she said slowly. “Just not together.”
“Just not together,” I said.
The oven timer beeped. Lily jumped off the counter.
“Cookies!”
That night, I finally called my father back.
He picked up on the first ring.
“Claire.”
“Hi, Dad.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. I could hear him breathing.
“I’m so sorry, kiddo,” he said finally. His voice was thick. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I’ve been sitting here every night thinking about your mother,” he said. “What she’d say to me if she knew. She’d have my head on a platter.”
I laughed a little. “She would.”
“She always said I was a terrible liar. Remember? She said I couldn’t keep a secret about a birthday present for five minutes.” He laughed too, but it was a sad laugh. “And then I went and kept the biggest secret of my life from you. For three years.”
“Why, Dad? Really, why?”
He was quiet.
“Because when your mother got sick,” he said slowly, “I didn’t tell you how bad it was. Not until the very end. You were sixteen. I thought I was protecting you.” He took a breath. “And you never forgave me for that. Not really. You told me once you wished you’d known sooner, so you could have said goodbye properly.”
I closed my eyes. I remembered saying that. I was nineteen. We were standing at her grave.
“I swore I’d never do that to you again,” Dad said. “And then I did exactly the same thing. Because I’m a coward too, kiddo. I can’t stand watching my girls hurt. I’ll do anything to stop it. Even when the anything is worse.”
I sat on Sarah’s couch with Pickles in my lap and cried.
“Dad,” I said. “I’m not sixteen anymore.”
“I know, honey.”
“I’m thirty-five. You have to let me get hurt sometimes. You have to let me handle things.”
“I know,” Dad said. “I know. I’m going to try. I promise I’m going to try.”
Ethan and I met for the first time on a Tuesday evening, at the end of the third week.
I picked the place. Not our Italian restaurant. Not Paolo. I picked a little coffee shop near Sarah’s apartment that neither of us had ever been to. I didn’t want anything that had memories in it.
He was already there when I walked in, sitting at a table in the back. He’d lost weight. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. He stood up when he saw me, then didn’t know what to do with his hands, then sat back down.
I sat down across from him.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“I’m not here to get back together,” I said. “I want you to know that. I’m here because Lily asked me to talk to you.”
He winced. “She did?”
“She called me again yesterday. She said, ‘Claire, please talk to Daddy. He’s so sad he burned the potatoes.’”
Ethan put his hand over his eyes. He laughed, and it was half a sob.
“He did burn the potatoes,” he said. “Really badly. The smoke alarm went off.”
We talked for three hours.
Really talked. For the first time in three years.
He told me about Megan. How she’d been so tired at the end, but she’d still made Lily’s lunches every day. How she’d made Ethan promise to braid Lily’s hair the way she liked it, and he’d watched YouTube videos for a week to learn. How Megan had made him promise, in the hospital, two days before she died, to tell me.
“She said, ‘Ethan, you can’t raise my daughter with a secret,’” he said. “‘Kids always find out. Always. And then they think they were the secret.’” He looked down at his coffee. “She was right. Lily asked me if I was ashamed of her. That’s exactly what Megan said would happen.”
“Why didn’t you just do it, Ethan? After she died? Forget what Dad said. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
He was quiet for a long time.
“Because every day I didn’t tell you made it harder to tell you the next day,” he said. “That’s how lies work. You think you’re just waiting for the right moment. But every day you wait, the lie gets bigger. And then it’s not just ‘I have a daughter.’ It’s ‘I have a daughter and I’ve been lying to you for a year.’ Then two years. Then three.” He shook his head. “By the end, I was more afraid of you finding out how long I’d lied than of you finding out about Lily.”
“That’s exactly what happened,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’m angry about. Not Lily. I could never be angry about Lily. The lying.”
“I know.”
“You made me think I wasn’t worth marrying, Ethan.”
“I know,” he said. His eyes filled up. “I know I did. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“Did you really buy a ring?” I asked him.
He nodded slowly.
“Two and a half years ago,” he said. “Right after the custody stuff with Megan’s sister got settled. I thought, okay, now. Now I’ll tell her everything, and then I’ll ask her. I went to the jeweler on Lake Street and picked it out. I told Robert. I said, ‘This weekend, I’m telling her.’”
“And Dad said not yet.”
“Robert said not yet,” Ethan said. “You’d just gotten promoted at work. You were so happy. He said, ‘Let her have this. Just for a few weeks.’” Ethan laughed bitterly. “The ring’s been in my sock drawer ever since. Every time you asked me about marriage, I’d go to bed and think about it in there. Right under your nose. Behind my running socks.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m not asking you for anything, Claire,” he said quietly. “I’m not asking you to come back. I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to know the truth. All of it. No more secrets. That’s all.”
I looked at him across the table for a long time.
“No more secrets,” I said.
“None,” he said. “I promise. Ever again. If I’m scared, I’ll tell you I’m scared. If something’s wrong, I’ll tell you. Even if it’s going to hurt.”
