Oliver knew this about me. I’d told him early, when we were still figuring each other out, sitting on the floor of his first apartment eating cheap takeout.
“I don’t care what the truth is,” I’d told him. “You can tell me anything. Any awful thing. I can handle almost anything if you just say it to my face. What I can’t handle is finding out from someone else. That’s the one thing. Don’t ever make me hear it from someone else.”
He’d taken my hand and said, “Deal.”
For seven years, I believed he’d kept that deal.
That Friday night started like nothing.
Daisy was overtired and wouldn’t go down. She’d been fighting sleep for over an hour, crying, kicking off her blanket, that miserable exhausted wailing that scrapes at your nerves. By nine o’clock, both of us were fried.Oliver grabbed his keys off the counter.
“I’ll take her for a drive,” he said. “You know it always works. Five minutes in the car seat and she’ll be out cold. Give you a break.”
“Okay.” I was too tired to argue with anything that might produce silence. “Bring her blanket, she likes the blanket.”
“I’ve got it. Go sit down. Have some wine.”
I kissed Daisy’s hot little forehead. She smelled like tears and baby shampoo. I watched Oliver buckle her into the car seat through the front window, watched the headlights swing out of the driveway, and then I went back inside and poured that glass of wine and sat down on the couch in the beautiful quiet.
