I looked at the sign.
“And every day,” I said, “I thought about what would happen if I did.”
“You’d have been grateful,” I said. “Suddenly. You’d have thanked me for dinner. You’d have asked me to stay. Renee would have said Would you mind? again instead of I need you to.”
Renee closed her eyes.
“And I would never have known,” I said. “Whether you meant it.”
“So I waited,” I said. “I kept making lunches. Kept driving the kids. Kept folding laundry.”
I looked at Daniel.
“And on October seventeenth, at six-eighteen p.m., you looked across a roast chicken I made with your grandmother’s recipe,” I said, “and asked me when I was finally moving out.”
“Now I know,” I said.
Daniel sat down.
On the front walk. Between the rose bushes. In his khakis and his polo shirt.
He put his face in his hands.
