Olivia comes into the world healthy and perfect, a wailing baby with blonde fuzz on her head and bleary blue eyes. The symptoms start at four months, the diagnosis comes in at five, and the prognosis is devastating.
Dan’s daughter is there and then gone again so very abruptly. He thought he knew loss when Milo was taken from him but this is something else altogether. There is an awful ache in his chest for the longest time and he thinks Serena might blame him. She has an affair.
-
He forgives Serena for sleeping with Ben’s soccer coach. She cries when he confronts her and he tries to dismiss it all as grief. He puts his arms around her and her hands lift to his shoulders but she doesn’t curl against him like she used to. He tells her that she’s sorry and all she says is don’t.
-
Serena cooks dinner every night and repaints three rooms in their house. She buys new furniture with money from her inheritance. She sleeps curled up at the very edge of their bed, far away from him. Dan can’t understand her restlessness.
He feels very quiet, exhausted in an endless way. It takes a lot of effort for him to get up, for him to type a single thing, to link five words together in a sentence.
Ben bounces back, the way kids do, and Serena just keeps moving.
-
Serena starts spending all kinds of time in the city with Blair, letting Ben throw basketballs around with Nate. Dan spends all kinds of time staring at a cursor blinking on the first time of a blank document.
-
Ben has a Christmas concert at school. All the kids dress up and sing songs out of sync, out of tune, with zero sense of harmony. The parents take pictures from the audience.
They wait in the hallway for Ben after it’s all over, Serena’s camera hanging around her neck. Dan studies her face, the slope of her nose, the curve of her mouth, the blue of her eyes. He wonders who she is.
Serena lifts her arm to glance at her watch, the one that cost more than Dan makes in a year, and then looks over at him. Her lips are in a straight line and her eyes have lost all their sparkle.
Sometimes, when Dan is in a crappy place in the middle of the night and he’s had too much to drink, alone in their kitchen, he thinks that Olivia dying was an extra nail in a coffin that had been shut for a long, long time.
-
The divorce is filed in February. Serena moves back to New York and when they tell Ben, gently over ice cream, that he’ll live with one of them during the week and the other every second weekend, he chooses to go with her.
Nate comes to pick her up on Blair’s orders. He helps pack the moving van and jokes around with Ben. He takes their son into the car first so that they can have a moment to say goodbye.
Dan doesn’t know what to say. He gives Serena a letter in a sealed envelope and she kisses his cheek, a soft little thing. She gets into the car and it pulls out of the driveway.
Dan lifts his hand in a wave that she doesn’t see, and then he’s alone with a typewriter again, like nothing has changed at all.
-
Olivia comes into the world healthy and perfect, a wailing baby with blonde fuzz on her head and bleary blue eyes. The symptoms start at four months, the diagnosis comes in at five, and the prognosis is devastating.
Dan’s daughter is there and then gone again so very abruptly. He thought he knew loss when Milo was taken from him but this is something else altogether. There is an awful ache in his chest for the longest time and he thinks Serena might blame him. She has an affair.
-
He forgives Serena for sleeping with Ben’s soccer coach. She cries when he confronts her and he tries to dismiss it all as grief. He puts his arms around her and her hands lift to his shoulders but she doesn’t curl against him like she used to. He tells her that she’s sorry and all she says is don’t.
-
Serena cooks dinner every night and repaints three rooms in their house. She buys new furniture with money from her inheritance. She sleeps curled up at the very edge of their bed, far away from him. Dan can’t understand her restlessness.
He feels very quiet, exhausted in an endless way. It takes a lot of effort for him to get up, for him to type a single thing, to link five words together in a sentence.
Ben bounces back, the way kids do, and Serena just keeps moving.
-
Serena starts spending all kinds of time in the city with Blair, letting Ben throw basketballs around with Nate. Dan spends all kinds of time staring at a cursor blinking on the first time of a blank document.
-
Ben has a Christmas concert at school. All the kids dress up and sing songs out of sync, out of tune, with zero sense of harmony. The parents take pictures from the audience.
They wait in the hallway for Ben after it’s all over, Serena’s camera hanging around her neck. Dan studies her face, the slope of her nose, the curve of her mouth, the blue of her eyes. He wonders who she is.
Serena lifts her arm to glance at her watch, the one that cost more than Dan makes in a year, and then looks over at him. Her lips are in a straight line and her eyes have lost all their sparkle.
Sometimes, when Dan is in a crappy place in the middle of the night and he’s had too much to drink, alone in their kitchen, he thinks that Olivia dying was an extra nail in a coffin that had been shut for a long, long time.
-
The divorce is filed in February. Serena moves back to New York and when they tell Ben, gently over ice cream, that he’ll live with one of them during the week and the other every second weekend, he chooses to go with her.
Nate comes to pick her up on Blair’s orders. He helps pack the moving van and jokes around with Ben. He takes their son into the car first so that they can have a moment to say goodbye.
Dan doesn’t know what to say. He gives Serena a letter in a sealed envelope and she kisses his cheek, a soft little thing. She gets into the car and it pulls out of the driveway.
Dan lifts his hand in a wave that she doesn’t see, and then he’s alone with a typewriter again, like nothing has changed at all.
(end)
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