One Sunday afternoon, when Grace was almost two and had learned to run with disastrous confidence, Eric arrived carrying pastries from a bakery Maya actually liked because they made things in sane portions. Rachel came with him, warm and dry-witted and entirely unimpressed by male mythology. They sat around the dining table while Grace threw blueberries from her high chair with the concentration of an artist.
At one point, while Rachel took the baby to wash sticky hands, Eric turned serious.
“I never really asked you both something,” he said.
Taylor looked up from cutting toast into absurdly precise strips. “That sounds ominous.”
Eric ignored him. “Do you wish I hadn’t done it?”
The apartment quieted.
Maya rested her chin on her hand. She had thought about this more than once over the years, usually at inconvenient times. The truthful answer had changed as healing changed shape.
“I wish,” she said slowly, “that you had trusted truth more than manipulation.”
