He waited.
She turned back.
“Every conversation. Every plan. Every trip. If she’s unhappy, everything stops.”
“She’s eight.”
“She has a nanny. A house full of people. A grandmother. Your sister. She isn’t abandoned because you don’t answer immediately.”
“No,” he said. “She felt abandoned because you told her I was choosing not to want her.”
Viola’s eyes filled.
“You know what it’s like to be loved only in the spaces somebody else leaves?”
He could understand loneliness.
He could understand wanting a partner’s full attention.
What he could not accept was the route she had chosen through those feelings.
“You should have spoken to me.”
“I did.”
“Then I should have listened. You still had no right to use Poppy.”
She stared at him.
The words did not cancel her pain.
They placed responsibility beside it.
She seemed to find that less bearable.
Upstairs, Poppy had changed into pajamas.
Miriam stood beside the bed holding the rabbit Poppy usually slept with.
“She asked whether you’d come.”
Cassian looked at his daughter.
“I’m here.”
Poppy pulled the blanket higher.
“Are you cross with Viola?”
“Yes.”
“Because I said?”
“Because of what she did.”
His daughter watched him.
“Would you still be cross if I didn’t tell?”
“I wouldn’t know everything. That doesn’t make telling wrong.”
She looked toward the door.
“Is she leaving?”
“For tonight, she’ll stay somewhere else.”
Poppy’s eyes filled again.
Cassian sat beside her.
He had expected relief.
Instead, she whispered, “I didn’t want everybody gone.”
He took a breath.
“I know.”
“I just wanted you back.”
He placed his hand beside hers.
She held it.
The distinction mattered.
Poppy had not asked to end a relationship.
She had asked why her father no longer wanted her.
What happened between the adults remained theirs to decide.
He told her that.
She listened without looking entirely convinced.
