"No," he said. "She was sick for a while. We knew things might not turn out the way we wanted." Lily asked whether knowing ahead of time made losing someone easier, and Daniel told her it sometimes made the days before harder because every good moment came with the knowledge that it might not happen again.
He explained that Sarah had loved turning ordinary errands into small adventures, that she had once spent an entire afternoon teaching Noah to distinguish bridge shapes from the highway, and that she had laughed when Daniel tried to use the engineering terms correctly. "She liked people who tried," he said. "She never made anybody feel foolish for asking how something worked." Lily quietly turned her pencil over in her fingers.
"My dad isn't dead," she said, "but sometimes it feels like he's gone somewhere I can't reach." Daniel replied that distance could exist even when someone lived twenty minutes away. He told her he was not qualified to explain her father, and she nodded, appearing relieved that he had not tried. "He's in there now," she added, looking toward the house.
Catherine emerged shortly before noon. Her face was composed, but Daniel had begun to recognize the version of composure she used when it cost her something. She waited until Lily went inside before walking to the fence and saying, "That was Richard Hail. My former husband." She explained that Richard had heard about the shareholder dispute from someone on the board and believed the situation justified changing their custody agreement.
Daniel stopped tightening the bracket and turned toward her. "He's asking for primary custody?" he said. "Temporary primary custody," Catherine corrected bitterly. "During what his attorney calls a period of professional instability. Apparently losing authority over a corporation might make me unfit to decide what Lily eats for breakfast."
Richard also wanted to discuss purchasing her share of the house. Catherine described the offer as generous in the way a man describes a price when he hopes the person receiving it is too frightened to check the terms. The house was jointly owned under an agreement from the divorce, but Catherine had occupied it with Lily for three years. "He says the market is favorable," she said. "What he means is that he thinks I'm about to become desperate."
Daniel asked whether she planned to accept the offer. She told him she had said she would consider it, mainly to end the conversation. He nodded, then asked if Lily knew about the custody petition. Catherine shook her head.
"She has enough on her mind. We just had one difficult conversation about the company. I don't intend to hand her another problem in the same morning."
"She may hear about it anyway," Daniel said. "Richard's the sort of man who wants people to notice what he's doing." Catherine flinched at the accuracy of that observation, then told Daniel she did not need parenting advice from someone who had spent only two days at her house. He said that was fair and did not push the subject further.