"And us?"
"Not today."
For once, Clara listened.
She left.
Over the next two weeks, we built a temporary life around Lola.
It was awkward.
Painfully logistical.
I stayed with Theo during weekdays and used the apartment on certain evenings when Clara stayed with her sister.
Lola remained primarily in the apartment because both of us agreed that moving her back and forth constantly while we were uncertain would be unfair.
We created a shared calendar.
School.
Dance class.
Dentist.
Meals.
Sleepovers.
Nothing about Logan.
Nothing about blame.
The first time Clara and I sat across from each other at the kitchen table to discuss Lola's schedule, we looked like coworkers negotiating a merger.
Then Lola walked in.
She had drawn three stick figures.
One on each side of a giant red dog.
"We don't have a dog," I said.
"We should."
Clara laughed before she could stop herself.
So did I.
For three seconds, we were ourselves again.
Then silence returned.
Children can both break tension and expose it.
Lola looked between us.
"Are you getting divorced?"
Neither of us answered quickly enough.
She put the drawing down.
"My friend Hannah's parents got divorced."
Clara reached for her.
"We don't know yet."
Lola looked at me.
"Do you?"
"No."
It was one of the hardest honest answers I ever gave.
She began crying.
Clara moved first.
Then I did.
The three of us ended up on the kitchen floor.
Lola between us.
Her face against my chest.
One hand gripping Clara's sleeve.
"I don't want two houses."
"I know," Clara whispered.
"I want this house."
"I know."
I looked over Lola's head at my wife.
There was no victory in either of us.
Only damage.
That night, after Lola slept, Clara and I talked for four hours.
No Logan at first.
We went backward.
Ten years.
The first years of marriage.
When Lola was born.
The exhaustion.
Clara returning to work.
My promotion.
My father's illness.
Her mother's surgery.
The year we stopped taking vacations alone.
The Saturday breakfasts that gradually disappeared.
The evenings when I worked from the couch.
The times Clara asked me to come to bed and I said I would after one more email.
The birthdays where gifts became efficient instead of intimate.
A laptop she needed.
Noise-canceling headphones I knew she wanted.
Useful things.
Very little romance.
Clara admitted she stopped telling me what she wanted because she became convinced I would treat her desires as scheduling problems.
I admitted I stopped asking because I believed if something were truly wrong, she would tell me directly.
We had each assigned the other person responsibility for translating our silence.
Eventually Clara said:
"Logan started talking to me after the Chicago conference."
"What happened in Chicago?"
"Nothing physical."
"Tell me anyway."
She explained.
Her presentation had gone badly.
A senior executive criticized her in front of the team.
Clara called me afterward.
I remembered.
I had been helping Lola finish a school project.
Clara told me the presentation had been rough.
I said:
"That sucks. We'll talk when you get home."
Then I returned to the volcano.
I had forgotten the conversation completely.
Logan had not.
He found Clara in the hotel bar afterward.
Sat beside her.
Asked what happened.
Listened for two hours.
"Did he flirt?"
"Not then."
"When?"
"A few weeks later."