My jaw tightened.
“Where’s your mother?”
Silence.
Three seconds.
Long enough.
“She said I should just apologize.”
I was already walking toward my truck.
“Sophie, listen to me. I’m leaving now. Do you have your coat?”
“My sweater.”
“Your coat?”
“It’s inside.”
I stopped beside the driver’s door.
It was twenty-two degrees.
My sixteen-year-old daughter was standing outside in a thin holiday sweater because she had defended me.
“Stay on the porch,” I said. “I’m coming.”
The drive normally took about ninety-one minutes.
I made it in sixty-three.
I remember very little about the road.
I remember the dashboard showing twenty degrees at one point. I remember both hands locked around the steering wheel. I remember realizing that I was not experiencing the kind of anger that makes people shout.
Mine was colder than that.
When I turned onto the Collins street, the house looked almost offensively warm.
Christmas lights traced the porch.
The windows glowed gold.
Inside, people moved around a table under chandelier light.
Sophie stood at the far end of the porch with her arms wrapped around herself.
Her backpack sat near her feet.
Through the front window, I saw Martin laughing.
I saw Clare near the kitchen doorway with a champagne flute in her hand, smiling at somebody.
She had not come outside once.
I got out of the truck and took off my coat.
Sophie did not say anything when I wrapped it around her.
She grabbed me around the ribs.
For a second she felt eight years old again, racing across our living room because I had come home from a long shift.
I held her until the shaking eased.
Then I looked through the window.
“Stay here.”
“Dad—”
“I’m getting your coat.”
I walked to the front door.
I did not knock.
I pushed it open hard enough that it struck the wall.
The room went silent.
Music still played somewhere for half a second before somebody lowered it.
Forks stopped.
Glasses hovered.
Around forty faces turned toward me.
Martin stood near the fireplace with a drink.
I ignored him.
Sophie’s coat was draped over a chair close to the entryway.
I crossed the room and picked it up.