She did not think of herself as cruel. That was the trouble. Cruel people, in the story she told, enjoyed the damage or at least admitted it. She was afraid. She had watched her father remarry and had watched the new wife leave her mother's garden shoes by the trash and call it freshness. She had sworn she would never be a second woman competing with a ghost. Then she had become one, and the ghost had a face Amara could point at, and the pointing felt like a vote. Each time the child said Mommy to a photograph, Claire heard a future in which she was the person who had done the bottles and would not be invited to the wedding toast. She had no baby of her own. Two miscarriages in her thirties, before Marcus, had ended that particular hope, and she had not told him in any detail because detail would have made her a project. She had wanted to be a choice. Hiding Naomi was, in her mind, a way of being chosen again every morning, by a house that did not argue.
It was not a way of being chosen. It was a way of being alone with a secret, and of teaching a toddler that love had a correct photograph.
Marcus, on the rug, did not know all of that yet. He knew the ring. He knew the bracelet. He knew his name on envelopes in Denise's hand. He knew his daughter had tried to open a drawer and had been stopped. The rest he was about to learn because he had finally stayed in the room.
***
Amara's fist loosened on his tie. The cry had worn itself down to shudders. She was heavy in the way of children who have spent the feeling and are negotiating with sleep. He did not put her in the crib. The crib was in the nursery, and the nursery was a room where Claire's systems were intact, labeled bins and a white-noise machine and a mobile of felt clouds Claire had bought to replace a mobile of paper birds Naomi had hung. He stayed on the floor. If he stood, he would have to decide where to stand, and Claire was still in the doorway occupying one of the options.
"Read them," he said. "Not all. Start with Denise. Out loud."
"She is almost asleep."
"Then be quiet enough not to wake the part of her that's leaving. Read."
Claire came in. She sat on the edge of the bed, not on the floor, which was a small refusal he let her have. She took the top envelope he held out. Her thumb found the tear she had made weeks ago. She unfolded the letter. The paper shook, or her hand did.
"Marcus," she read. "I called on Sunday and got your wife, who says you are busy. I believe you are busy. You have been busy since you were twenty-nine and Naomi had to schedule an argument with you. I am not writing to schedule an argument. I am writing because I have not seen my sister's child since Christmas, and the last time I drove to your house I was told there was a fever I am not sure was there. If I am wrong, tell me I am wrong in your own voice. If Amara is better off with fewer people, I will hate it and I will hear it from you. I will not hear it from a screen door. She has Naomi's ears. Someone should say her mother's name in the house where her mother paid the light bill. I love you. I am angry. Those can both be in the car on the way to Decatur. Denise."