Claire zipped up the empty suitcase and pushed it against the hallway wall, as if that small, ordinary movement marked the beginning of an entirely new chapter in their lives. Their recently purchased three-bedroom apartment still carried the faint smell of fresh paint. Most of the furniture had not arrived yet, so every voice traveled through the bare rooms and came back as a bright, hollow echo. Sophie, meanwhile, raced from one room to another, excitedly explaining that she had already chosen the perfect place for her future “mermaid bed.”
“We bought this apartment three weeks ago, and I still sometimes forget which way the bathroom is,” Daniel admitted from the doorway.
“Somewhere between your pride and my exhaustion. Left of the first and right of the second,” Claire replied calmly. “You won’t get lost.”
“Very funny.”
“I have to try. At the moment, humor is the only thing we got for this apartment completely free of charge.”
Daniel set a folder of documents on the wide windowsill. For a few seconds, the two of them looked at it at the same time, wearing the particular expression people have when they are looking at something that has been settled beyond argument. The apartment officially belonged to Claire. Daniel himself had insisted on that arrangement years earlier, after her father inherited a house from his own late father, sold the old property, and gave the proceeds to his daughter.
“Richard called today,” Daniel said. “He wanted to know whether we’d bought Sophie a swim ring.”
“We did. It’s pink, and it has little ears. She’s now prepared to take it to bed with her.”
“Your father really is extraordinary. He gave you every penny and never even started asking what you planned to spend it on.”
“He did ask one question,” Claire said with a smile. “He said, ‘Is the mortgage paid off?’ I told him it was. He said, ‘Good.’ That was the entire historic family finance meeting.”
Sophie burst into the room, clutching a drawing in both hands. A crooked blue sea spread across the page, while an enormous yellow sun occupied nearly half the paper.
“This is us,” the girl announced importantly. “We’re going there in eight days.”
“Nine,” Daniel corrected.
“No, eight. I counted on my fingers. Fingers never lie.”
At that moment, Daniel’s phone, resting on the windowsill, began to vibrate. He glanced at the screen, and his expression changed instantly, as though the room had suddenly grown colder.
“Margaret?” Claire guessed.
“Margaret.”
His mother arrived the following day, choosing, by what seemed like deliberate design, a time when Daniel was away from home. Once inside, she slowly surveyed the almost empty rooms and ran one hand along the freshly painted doorframe, as if testing whether the whole thing was real.
“So it really is a three-bedroom place,” she said slowly. “You two certainly settled in quickly.”
“Quickly is when something happens in a single day,” Claire answered evenly. “This took us six years, a mortgage, and one canceled vacation. By ordinary human standards, we moved at the speed of a very tired turtle.”
“Speaking of vacations. Daniel told me you’re going to the coast.”
“We are. Sophie has already drawn her own route there.”
Margaret sat on the only chair in the room, folded her hands in her lap, and arranged her face into the solemn expression of someone about to announce a matter of national importance.
“Claire, think this over one more time. Calmly, without getting emotional. Rachel has spent the entire summer inside with two children. The summer is almost over, and they have never seen the ocean.”
“I do feel sorry for them.”
“Then what would it cost you? Give the money to Rachel. Let her take the children away, get some rest, breathe a little, and recover. You and Daniel are still young. You have your whole lives ahead of you. You can go to the coast a hundred more times.”
Claire quietly picked up the jar of paintbrushes Sophie had left nearby that morning and moved it onto the windowsill.
“Margaret, let me make sure I understand your suggestion. We are supposed to cancel our tickets, unpack the suitcases, tell our five-year-old daughter that she will not be seeing the ocean after all, and hand the money to your daughter?”
“Why do you have to say it like that? You make it sound so harsh.”
“I’m not being harsh. I’m being precise. Harshness is when someone wraps an unpleasant demand in pretty language and hopes the meaning will change.”
“Try to understand me as one woman to another!” Margaret’s voice shook and rose. “Rachel is having such a hard time! She’s raising two children alone! She’s exhausted and completely overwhelmed!”
“And why have you decided that your daughter’s children require us to abandon our own plans?” Claire asked with the faintest smile.
Margaret straightened at once, and the chair gave a long, protesting creak beneath her.
“What did you just say?”