"No."
"I'm not asking you to say anything about it. I'm telling you."
"I heard you."
She turned around and leaned against the counter and looked at him. He was looking at his hands on his knees. He looked smaller on the stool than he did at the head of the table. She had always thought he was a big man. Maybe he had only been big at the table.
"You said it at the table on Linden," she said. "To Michael. The hot dogs. You remember."
"I remember."
"I didn't know I remembered. Until I heard it come out."
"I know," he said. "I heard it too."
"You hit me then, too."
"I know."
"Is that all you're going to say? *I know?*"
He lifted his head. His eyes were red. "What else is there, Tess. You want me to say I was tired. I was tired. You want me to say your mother was sick. She was. None of it's a reason. I've had thirty-two years to find one and there isn't one. There's just what I did, and you sitting at my table with your shoulders up by your ears every Christmas of your life, and me letting you." He stopped. His jaw worked under the bristle. "And then last night I walked over and did it again. To you. In front of that girl. After all that. So, no. I don't have anything else. I'm not going to stand in your kitchen and make it sound better than it is."
The coffee machine gave a long gurgle and went quiet.
Theresa poured two cups. She put sugar in his without asking and set it on the counter by his hand, not in it.
"I've been doing it to her," she said. "Not hitting. I've never—" She stopped, because she wasn't sure it mattered as much as she wanted it to. "The other thing. The plate. The way I look at her. Not every day. Enough." She held her own cup in both hands. "She's got his face. Danny's. And she was there for all of it, the year Mom died, she was the only thing in that apartment that wasn't dead or gone, and I couldn't—I couldn't look at her without it. Any of it." She heard how it sounded. She made herself keep going. "That's not a reason either."