CHAP 2 — The Calls He Didn’t Answer
David remembered every call at once.
The phone buzzing while he unloaded pallets.
Clara’s name on the screen.
His own tired voice snapping before she finished a sentence.
“Ask your mother.”
“I’m working.”
“Don’t call me for little things.”
He had not meant to be cruel.
That was the excuse he reached for first.
But excuses do not clean burns from a child’s fingers.
He lowered Mikey onto his hip and looked around the kitchen as if seeing it for the first time. The old apartment was not merely messy. It was losing a war. Empty formula containers sat near the trash. A wet towel lay under the radiator leak. A school paper with Clara’s name on it was stuck to the table beneath a dirty bowl.
David had thought providing meant surviving outside the home.
Rent.
Gas.
Diapers.
Milk.
He worked doubles at the loading dock because there was never enough money. He left before sunrise and came home after dark. When Jessica said she was exhausted, he answered with the kind of sentence his father had used on his mother.
“Everybody’s tired. Hang in there.”
He had believed that was strength.
Now his daughter stood in front of a dead stove, shaking from responsibility that belonged to him.
“What happened today?” he asked, quieter.
Clara wiped her nose with the back of her wrist.
“Mom cried after lunch. Then she went in the bedroom. Mikey kept crying.”
“Did she feed him?”
“I tried to make a bottle, but the milk was gone.”
His throat tightened.
“What did you give him?”
“Water first. Then I found soup.”
“Did you change him?”
Clara looked down.
“I tried. There weren’t clean diapers.”
David closed his eyes.
The baby cried against him, small body hot and furious.
“I washed one in the sink,” Clara whispered.
David opened his eyes.
His daughter had washed a diaper in the sink.
While he was lifting boxes and telling himself that money was enough.
He walked to the counter and saw his phone charger lying beside a stack of unpaid bills. His own phone had twenty-three missed calls from the apartment landline over the past month. Most were short. Some were less than ten seconds. Clara calling, waiting, learning not to expect him.
A sound came from the bedroom.
Low.
Broken.
Human.
David turned toward the hallway.
“Jessica?”
No answer.
Clara stepped behind him and gripped the back of his coat.
“Dad,” she whispered, suddenly scared again. “Don’t yell at her.”
That sentence frightened him more than the boiling soup.
May you like
Because Clara knew what he was likely to do.
And she was still protecting her mother from him.
