He did not answer her right away, which told me plenty.
I looked at her. “You didn’t know about them.”
Her expression changed fast. “I’m Claire,” she said slowly. “He told me you were separated.”
“We weren’t.”
Daniel stepped in too quickly. “Can we not do this here?”
“You left me on bed rest and stayed gone through a high-risk delivery and three months in the NICU,” I said. “I think here is fine.”
Claire took one step away from him.
He lowered his voice. “This isn’t the place.”
“No,” I said. “The hospital would have been the place. The NICU would have been the place. My living room while I was signing insurance forms alone would have been the place.”
Claire took one step away from him.
“Daniel,” she said carefully, “you told me there wasn’t really a marriage anymore.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s complicated.”
“You lost the right to a quiet conversation when you answered a photo of your premature daughters with one word.”
“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”
“I don’t want a scene,” he muttered.
“You lost the right to a quiet conversation when you answered a photo of your premature daughters with one word.”
His face changed. “Helen—”
“Cute,” I said. “That was your word.”
Claire looked at him sharply. “You saw your babies in the hospital and sent that?”
Then he shifted into the tone I remembered from every argument we had ever had.
He snapped, “I was on a ship with bad reception. I didn’t know what to say.”
Then he shifted into the tone I remembered from every argument we had ever had, the one where he spoke like the victim of other people’s reactions.
“I came back because we need to settle things like adults,” he said. “The divorce. The finances. The house.”
“The house?”
“We can’t afford to drag this out,” he said. “We need to be practical.”
“You were gone for four months.”
“And custody?” I asked.
“If you make this ugly, yes.”
“You were gone for four months.”
“I still have rights.”
