Rusty tells us about her weekend for an hour, then re-tells us about her weekend when Levi and Caleb replace Seth, and then even after I head into the kitchen for some water and find myself discussing undiscovered Amazonian tribes with Eli for thirty minutes, I can hear her telling everyone about her weekend yet again.
Like I said, I think she may have had some sugar.
Finally, it’s her bedtime. Daniel herds her around to everyone, and when it’s my turn she throws her arms around me dramatically and squeezes for a long time. Then, just as quickly, she’s moved on to Eli.
“Can you stay after I get her to bed?” Daniel asks quietly.
I raise one eyebrow, but he smiles and shakes his head.
“Sadly, no,” he says. “I gotta tell you something.”
Then Rusty’s scampering upstairs, he’s hustling after her, and Eli and I go back to debating whether or not there are still undiscovered indigenous tribes anywhere on earth. It’s unclear who’s on which side here, but I can tell it’s definitely a debate.
Though, then again, it might just be because that’s how Eli interacts with the world. He debates it.
Forty-five minutes later, Daniel finally reappears. By now I’m sitting in the living room with just Clara, Caleb, and Seth, all of whom are discussing who’s going to win the current season of The Bachelor.
I’m just listening, having never seen an episode, and Daniel nods toward the kitchen, then disappears. When I come in, he’s pouring himself a glass of whiskey from the sideboard where his mom keeps it, then holds up the bottle.
“Want some?” he asks.
I eye his glass, which is at least three fingers full. Daniel’s not usually much of a drinker, despite owning a brewery, so I wonder what the hell Crystal said to him out there.
“I gotta drive home, but thanks,” I say, and he just nods and corks the bottle, then takes a good long sip.
“I hate her,” he murmurs, almost inaudible, swirling the brown liquid in the glass. “Charlie, I try so fucking hard not to, but I do. I hate her.”
“What happened?” I ask, and he takes another drink.
“She says she knows that we’re faking it,” he says.“I don’t understand what she wants,” Daniel says, his eyes closed, his head in my lap as we rock gently. It’s thirty minutes later, his whiskey glass is drained, and we’re sitting on the porch swing.
Or, rather, I’m sitting and he’s lying across me, legs splayed off the side as we swing gently through the warm night air. The porch light is off to keep the bugs away, and the only light is from a sliver of moon and the stars above.
“I mean, why try to get custody when she never actually wants to see Rusty?” he asks, rhetorically, his eyes closed. “She’s cancelled so many visits, Charlie.”
“I know,” I say, stroking his hair back from his forehead.
“I think Rusty knows,” he says. “I try not to make a big deal out of it when Crystal cancels, but there’s no way to not tell her. She gets so disappointed, and I feel so fucking awful.”
My left hand is on his chest, and he finds it in one of his, closes his fingers around mine.
“I don’t even want full custody,” he says. “I’d love to split it fifty-fifty. I don’t want to keep her from her mom, I just want Crystal to want to be her mom and I don’t think she ever will.”
“I know,” I say softly.
It’s not the first time this has happened. Once or twice a year for the past five or so years, Daniel’s gotten tipsy after Rusty comes back from a visit and told me all this: how much he hates Crystal, how he wishes she were different, how he’s afraid that he’s screwed his kid up for life.
“I almost married her,” he says. “You want to know the craziest fucking thing, Charlie?”
My heart trips in my chest, takes a moment, beats again. I thought I knew everything, but I didn’t know that, though it makes sense. Sprucevale is small, Southern, conservative; if you knock a girl up, you best marry her.
“You did?” I ask.
“Yeah, and I wondered for years if I should have,” he says. “I swear I heard it a thousand fucking times, do the right thing.”
It hits me like lightning turning sand to glass; he says it and I harden, brittle, afraid that if I breathe, I’ll break.
For years? How many years?
“Maybe it would have been,” he goes on, his eyes still closed. “Maybe if I’d done the right thing like everyone said I should, Rusty would have a dog and a picket fence and a little sister and we’d be doing whatever the fuck happy married couples are supposed to do. I don’t know. Bowl on a league or some shit.”