‘I came because I wanted to be here.’ I give his shoulders a squeeze. ‘I can, you know, go back again if you’ve had enough of me already?’
He rolls his eyes and grins his adorable grin. He’s at that goofy stage when his grown-up teeth look too big for his still-childish face. So much growing to do; he’s going to need me and I’m determined to be here.
‘Will you stay for dinner?’
‘Well, first someone needs to carve those pumpkins,’ I say, avoiding the question. ‘Because we all know your mom isn’t the best at it, right?’ Susie is many things, but art isn’t her forte. ‘Come on, I’ll help you get down the stairs.’
I bear his weight as he stands, and for a second when he leans into me I gather him close.
‘Love you, Dad,’ he says. ‘I’m really glad you’re home.’
My heart expands. ‘Me too, kiddo.’
Coming home was one hundred per cent the right thing to do. I hope Leo learned today that whenever he needs me, even if I’m halfway around the world, he only has to say the word and I’ll be there.
For the next couple of hours, anyone watching us might have been fooled into believing this was just any Halloween, that we were your regular American family, carving pumpkins and decorating the front porch like the rest of the neighbourhood. I’ve always been a Halloween fan, but this year the macabre undertone feels particularly matched for the dark unease between me and Susie. We’ve both tried our best to make this time feel like a slice of normality for the boys but scratch the surface and it has been fraught with tension. Every time she glanced at the clock, I wondered if it was because Robert was due soon. If I made a comment, she automatically narrowed her eyes to search for the double meaning. I hope the boys at least know that our family foundation hasn’t crumbled, that we will always be able to be together like this regardless of what’s happening between me and Susie. I read somewhere that if you put the kids first, everything else falls into place behind it. I’ll go on record now and say that advice was much easier to swallow when there was no one else in the picture, but I guess it’s even more crucial when things get complicated. I think we’ve more or less pulled it off. So far, anyway. Now they’re over in a neighbour’s backyard with a bunch of other kids, and we’re sitting out on the porch the way we often used to. It’s the first time we’ve been alone for a while.
‘I’m sorry you found out about Robert the way you did,’ Susie says, her eyes trained ahead on the street rather than me.
‘I’m more sorry Leo found out that way,’ I say. I could be kinder, but it cuts deep to know Leo now lives with the same kind of memory of his mom as I do of walking in on my dad. I almost say as much; she knows, after all, how much that particular discovery has eaten at me over the years. I bite my tongue, though. It’d be a low blow, especially as she’s probably already connected the dots.
She rubs her hands down her face. ‘It was so awful, Mack. He cried, I cried.’ She sighs. ‘I really wish it had happened differently, that I could rewind time and make it not happen.’
My father didn’t experience any guilt, he didn’t even know I saw him that day. What happened to Leo is a world away from what happened to me, Susie will make sure of that. Me coming back here today will make sure of that.
‘How’ve you been?’ I ask. New shadows hang under her eyes and there’s brittleness to the set of her shoulders as she sits on the porch swing. I’ve seen her curled into that spot reading more times than I could count, one eye on the kids playing out in the street. She’s anything but relaxed today. Her blue eyes are bright with unshed tears when she turns them on me now.
‘I haven’t been sleeping too well. Just, you know …’ she knots her fingers in her lap, fidgeting, ‘worrying about everything.’
Every part of me wants to put my arm around her and reassure her that everything will be okay. That’s always been my role in our relationship – the strong shoulder, the rock everyone can lean on. But I don’t put my arm around her today. I can’t because I don’t know what my role is in Susie’s life any more. It’s clear-cut with the boys – I’m their dad, it’s carved in stone that I’ll love them for ever, no matter what. I look at Susie now and it’s hard to think the day will ever come when I don’t love her too. She’s the mother of my children, the woman I married, the love of my young life. If we were a Venn diagram, the boys would be the centre circle, Susie on one side and me the other, always overlapping. Different circles might overlap Susie’s on her other side, and other circles will overlap mine too, but the original three must stay connected or the whole thing falls apart. My parents let their circles drift away from each other. I won’t. With those circles in mind, I reach out and put my hand over Susie’s.