He had told Saul on Monday that he was giving the regional job back. Saul had tried to talk him out of it for about four minutes and then stopped, and called him back an hour later and offered him his old territory, Lancaster and York and Berks, home every night, at the old salary. He had taken it. It was eleven thousand dollars less a year than the job he was giving up, and Noelle wasn't working, and the mortgage on the brick half of a double on Locust Street did not care about any of it. He did the numbers on a legal pad at the kitchen table. There was only one column.
Noelle was at the place by the pond for twenty-six days. When she came home it was to her mother's, not to Locust Street, because that was in the plan. She was back at meetings, a morning one in Ephrata and the Tuesday night one at the church in Lititz, where Emery now sat in the back row with a Styrofoam cup of terrible coffee on the Tuesdays that Hedy took Linnea, because Rosario, on the phone from Ohio, had told him in no uncertain terms that it was about time. She had begun to write the number every morning on an index card on her mother's refrigerator, starting over at one. She sent him a picture of it each day. He looked at every one.
The first time she saw Linnea was in Dr. Mehrotra's office in Lancaster, on a Saturday in the middle of November, in the same room where the laminated plan had been made. There was the same box of markers on the low table. Linnea's face had healed weeks before. Emery sat on the couch beside his daughter, and Dr. Mehrotra sat in her armchair, and Noelle sat in a straight chair across from them, with nothing in her hands.
She did not cry, though he could see what it cost her not to. She had told him on the phone that she was not going to cry, because Linnea would try to comfort her, and Linnea had done enough of that.
"Linnie," she said. "I want to tell you some things, and you don't have to say anything back. Is that okay?"
Linnea nodded, against his arm.
"On the Thursday when Daddy came home from Richmond, I hit you in the face," Noelle said. "That was wrong. It was wrong because hitting is wrong, and it was wrong because I'm your mom and I'm supposed to keep you safe, and it was wrong because you didn't do anything bad. You did everything right. You did every single thing on the paper. You did the hardest one, which is saying no to a grown-up you love. I was drinking, and I was lying about it, and when you told the truth I hit you to make you stop. That's what happened. It wasn't because I was tired, or sad, or because you wouldn't listen. You listened better than anybody in our house." She stopped, and steadied. "I'm sorry. I'm not asking you to say it's okay. It's not okay. I'm going to keep being sorry for a long time, and I'm going to keep doing the things that help me not drink, and you don't have to watch me do them. That's not your job anymore."
Linnea looked up at Dr. Mehrotra.
"That's right," Dr. Mehrotra said. "That part's important, Linnea. Counting your mom's days isn't your job. It's hers, and her sponsor's, and the doctors', and your dad's. Your job is to be seven. To go to school and swim and fight with your dad about bedtime."
"I don't fight about bedtime," Linnea said.