"I want him gone," Marcus said finally. "From your job. From this house. From any sentence that includes my daughter's name."
"I already ended it," Mei said. "Last week. After the second time. I told him it was over. The clothes were… residual. Stupid. I was going to throw them out."
"You weren't," Marcus said. "If you were going to throw them out, they wouldn't have been hanging where Nora could reach them."
Mei had no answer for that. The truth sat between them like a third person on the bed.
Dinner was macaroni and steamed broccoli and the ice cream Nora had been promised. Marcus sat at the table and performed fatherhood with a precision that would have fooled strangers. He asked Nora about her coloring. He cut her broccoli into smaller pieces. He laughed when she said the navy tie made her feel like a boss. Mei sat across from him and drank water as if hydration could be a form of penance. The kitchen windows held the last of the evening. The upstairs bedroom waited above them like a room that had changed citizenship.
After Nora was bathed and read to and kissed on both cheeks and left with a night-light shaped like a crescent moon, Marcus packed a bag. Not everything. Three days of clothes. His charger. The book on his nightstand that he had been pretending to finish for a month. Mei stood in the doorway of their bedroom and watched him fold shirts that were actually his.
"Where will you go?"
"Jordan's couch," he said. Jordan was his cousin, divorced, reliable, the kind of man who asked few questions and offered clean towels. "I'll take Nora to school in the morning. You pick her up. We tell her Daddy has a work trip. For now."