Daniel looked down at his shoes.
“That isn’t what I was thinking about,” he said.
“Then what were you thinking about?”
He sat down hard on one of my kitchen stools, and something in him just — folded. Like whatever had been holding him upright for months had finally given out.
“I lost my job,” he said. “Four months ago.”
PART 5
I stared at him.
“What?”
“Four months ago. Right after the second-trimester scan.”
My anger, for one disorienting second, got shoved aside by pure confusion. “What do you mean you lost your job?”
Then he said the part that made it all so much worse.
“Claire doesn’t know.”
I actually said his name out loud like a warning. “Daniel.”
“Every morning I put on a shirt and tie and I leave the house like I’m going to the office. Then I sit in a coffee shop three blocks from our old building until five o’clock.” He rubbed both hands over his face. “I’ve sent out I don’t even know how many applications. Two interviews. Neither one went anywhere.”
