Chapter 5 - Shoes By The Door
I went into the kitchen. Ellie was at the table, chocolate all over her chin, cone gone.
"Hey, baby. Let's get your stuff. We're going home."
Her whole face opened up. "Now?"
"Right now."
"Can Bun-Bun come?"
"Bun-Bun always comes."
Diane appeared in the doorway behind me. "Ellie, sweetheart, remember you have school in the morning."
I turned around. "No. She doesn't."
"You cannot do this, Rachel."
"I already am."
I packed Ellie's things. It took a while. Drawers of clothes, two pairs of shoes, pajamas, a stack of library books, a folder fat with paintings and worksheets. Nobody with a guest packs like that. Diane had stopped thinking of my daughter as a visitor a long time ago.
I carried it all out to my car in three trips. Diane followed us into the driveway.
"You're going to regret disrupting her like this."
I buckled Ellie into her seat, kissed her forehead, shut the door. Then I looked at my mother-in-law across the roof of the car.
"The only thing I regret is trusting you."
Ellie talked the entire drive home. About Zoe. About the slide at school that was "so fast." About Grandma's heart pancakes. About how Daddy came by sometimes and watched TV.
That last one sat in my chest like a stone.
Greg got home a little after six. Ellie's sneakers were sitting by the front door. He saw them and stopped short.
"You went to my mom's."
"Yes."
He came into the living room. Ellie was on the couch watching cartoons, Bun-Bun in her lap.
"Hey, bug," he said, and smiled at her. She waved without looking away from the screen.
"Kitchen," I said. "Now."
I set the enrollment paperwork on the table between us. He looked down at it and didn't pick it up.
"So you found out."
"That's your first sentence? Not 'I'm sorry.' 'So you found out.'"
He sat. "I was going to tell you, Rachel."
"When? I've been begging for my daughter back for weeks."
"You were recovering."
"I had pneumonia. I wasn't in a coma."
"Mom was helping."
"Your mother enrolled our daughter in a preschool by her house and you signed the form. That's not helping. Tell me why."
He rubbed his face with both hands, the way you'd deal with a coworker who won't leave your desk.
"She needed structure."
"Not what I asked. Why did you want her to stay there?"
He met my eyes and said nothing, so I said it for him.
"You didn't want to pick her up. You didn't want to do bedtime. You didn't want to fight your mother about it. You didn't want any of it."
"That's not fair."
"Then tell me one thing you did for Ellie in six weeks. How many nights did you stay over there with her?"
He looked at the wall.
"How many mornings did you drop her at school?"
Nothing.
"How many times did you ask your mom when our kid was coming home?"
His jaw tightened. "I was working, Rachel."
"So was I, before my lungs quit."
"It's not the same."
"You're right." I heard my own voice drop, go quiet and flat. "It's not."
He just looked at me.
"I did the appointments," I said. "The meals. The clothes that fit and the ones that didn't. Bedtime, every night. You went to work and you came home and you sat down."
"That's not true."
"It's completely true. I got sick, and instead of stepping up and being her father, you handed the job to your mom and enjoyed the quiet."
"You're angry. I get it. But don't stand there and tell me I don't love my daughter."
"Loving her isn't the same as showing up for her."
He went still.
I felt strangely calm. Like something I'd been carrying for years had finally been set down.
"I don't have a real partner in you," I said. "And Ellie has a father who loves the title and skips the work."
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"That's a cruel thing to say."
"It's a true thing to say."
