Page 80 of Never Alone
"Noah eats whatever you put in front of him."
"He doesn't."
"He does for you."
He drank his coffee. He didn't smile at me. He didn't have to.
The hours between then and ten o'clock moved at no particular speed. Noah came down for breakfast. Cole made him pancakes. I changed twice and gave up. By nine-fifty, I was sitting in the living room with my hands folded in my lap.
The doorbell rang at ten.
She was a small woman, mid-fifties maybe, in a navy cardigan and the kind of low flats my grandmother had worn to church. She had a tote bag over one shoulder, a clipboard tucked under the same arm, and a smile that didn't look like one she had practiced in a mirror.
"Suzanne Delacroix. Suzanne, please. You must be Natalie."
She had my legal name. From the petition.
"I am. Please come in."
She came in and looked around the entry the way a friend would look around a friend's apartment for the first time. Interested. Not assessing.
"Oh, this is lovely."
Cole came out of the kitchen and put his hand out, and she shook it like she was shaking the hand of an old colleague—both palms, brief, no theatrics. She declined coffee. She accepted water. She followed me into the living room, sat down in the armchair we had pulled in from the corner the night before, and set the clipboard down on the coffee table beside her water glass.
There was one piece of paper on the clipboard. Nothing was written on it.
I made myself look away.
She asked us general questions to start. How long Cole and I had known each other.Since we were sixteen, Cole said, even and unembellished, the way he said most things. He didn't explain the sixteen. How recently we had reconnected. About the engagement. About my work at the bakery. About Noah's school, his teacher, and how he was settling in. We had practiced this two nights running over the kitchen table until I could speak about my own life as if it were a story that had happened to me. Cole answered the questions I had been most afraid to answer. I answered the ones I could answer in my own voice.
She didn't pick up a pen the entire time.
After about twenty minutes, she folded her hands.
"Would it be alright if I spent a few minutes with Noah? Just the two of us. Wherever he'd be most comfortable."
"His room," I said.
"Wonderful."
I got up, went down the hall, and tapped on Noah's door. He came out with his sleeves pulled down over his hands. He had been doing that more lately. I hadn't asked him about it.
"Hey, bud."
"Hi."
"Suzanne's going to talk with you for a few minutes. Just you and her. In your room. That okay?"
He nodded.
"I'll be right out here. So will Cole. You can come find us anytime if you want."
"Okay."
Suzanne held her hand out to him. He took it. The two of them went into his room, and the door closed behind them most of the way. It didn't close all the way. I noticed she had left it cracked deliberately.
Cole and I went into the master and sat on the edge of the bed.
