Chapter 36

Gabe watches as Jack goes out the front door, and then he turns to me with a question on his face, but before he can ask it, I say, “Help me cook dinner!” in one of those hyperexcited voices that adults use when they’re trying to distract kids.

I don’t want him to ask whatever he was about to ask, because I have no idea how to answer.

“Yeah!” he says.

I pull one of our new chairs over to the counter. “I left the step stool at Daddy’s house,” I tell him apologetically. “I’ll get you a new one tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why you leave it at Daddy’s house?”

“So you can use it when you visit Daddy there.”

We’ve talked several times over the last few days about what was going to happen, that Gabe and I were going to move into the new apartment together and Daddy was going to stay in the house at Revere Lake. That Gabe will keep visiting Daddy on the weekends the way he always has. And Gabe has taken it more or less in stride, asking some questions but not getting upset. It’s not unlike how he was about leaving Harris behind, and I thank God again that four is such a resilient age.

Dinner is one of those healthy frozen lasagna dinners and a bunch of cut-up raw veggies, which we eat at our new kitchen table. Gabe talks a mile a minute with his mouth full of chewed-up cauliflower, totally in love with his new bunk bed and the fort Jack made for him. After dinner, he tells me, he’s going to play more Legos in the fort.

I’m glad he’s happy and doubly glad he’s so chatty. It fills the big emptiness of our new surroundings. Not that they’re actually physically empty. We do still need more furniture, especially in the living area, but it’s not half bad. Maybe a coffee table and a couple of floor lamps, an end table, a bookshelf—but basically, it looks like a real apartment now. No, the emptiness is more that it feels like someone’s missing. I don’t mean to sound like I’m being coy or in denial—I know the someone is Jack. I just also know that there’s nothing I can do about it, except wait for time to take away the sense of absence.

After dinner I do the dishes, and Gabe helps again. He’s actually getting pretty good at soaping and rinsing. The kitchen looks only a little bit like there’s been a tsunami.

Then we do pj’s and teeth, and it’s surprisingly easy to convince Gabe to get in bed because of the bunk-bed fort. I crawl behind the hanging blanket and snuggle with him in the cave. It’s very peaceful in there. I totally understand why he loves it.

I get him all settled—he’s so sleepy that his eyes are already doing the long-blink routine—and I’m easing myself out of the fort when he says, “Where Daddy?”

A feeling like the dentist’s lead X-ray apron settles on my chest. “He’s at his house. In Revere Lake.”

“Why?”

No. No, please don’t do this. Not now.

“Because that’s where Daddy lives.”

“We live there too?”

I bite my lip. Hard. I think I taste blood.

“No, baby, we live here. In this apartment. This is our new apartment.”

“Why?”

“Gabe, honey, it’s late, and you need to go to sleep.”

“Why dis our new apartment?”

I can’t. I can’t comfort him about this, can’t explain this to him, can’t talk to him, or anyone, about this while it’s so raw and fresh for me. But I have no choice, do I? He’s here and I’m here and he wants to understand.

So much of parenting is about doing what needs to be done even when you don’t believe you have the strength to do it, because you have to. You have to have enough strength for yourself and your kids.

“Your mommy and your daddy both love you so much. But some mommies and daddies can’t live in the same house. They’re not—”

I almost said, They’re not friends. But Jack and I are friends.

The truth is, Some mommies and daddies can’t live in the same house because the daddy will never love the mommy as much as she wants to be loved by him.

“We only lived in Daddy’s house to give us time to find a place to stay, remember? And Mommy found a place, so now we have a place to stay, this wonderful apartment with your new bunk beds, and this is our new home. This is where we belong. And Daddy belongs in Revere Lake.”

“He come here? Say g’night?”

Gabe’s eyes are big, his lower lip beginning to quiver.

My chest clenches and tears fill my eyes. “No, baby. Not tonight. You’ll see him in six days. That’s not very long.”

Gabe thinks about that hard, his little brow furrowed up. For a moment I think we’re going be okay.

Then his whole serious, thoughtful face dissolves. He starts to cry. “Now. Daddy come now,” he wails.

“Oh, buddy,” I say, and all my inner walls come crashing down.

That’s how Gabe and I end up in the fort that Jack built, curled up together, while tears stream down his face and I try to hide my own.