“That was quick,” Clark said. “Did you really brush your teeth?”

Mary nodded seriously.

“Really?” he repeated.

She folded her arms tightly and nodded again, her whole body quivering like gelatin.

“Okay,” he said.

Clark turned off the overhead light but left the lamp lit by her bed. Mary liked the room bright throughout the night. He checked her windows and locked them, because otherwise, Mary had been known to climb outside and run through the backyards of the neighborhood. She didn’t sleep well. She might close her eyes for an hour, and then she would get up, and Clark would hear her bouncing an inflated ball against the bedroom wall. If he wasn’t too tired himself, he would get up and play with her, until finally she grew drowsy again. Sometimes she simply curled up on the floor, and he would pull the blankets off the bed and cover her.

He tucked her into bed. Her eyes were bright. “Good night, Mary.”

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you, too, honey.”

The ache in his stomach at the thought of her leaving in the morning was so great that he couldn’t say anything more. He kissed her forehead, and as he closed the door, he saw her waving her hands at the ceiling in bed, as if she could see the stars and conduct them like an orchestra.

Clark returned to the sofa and finished his beer and opened another one. He thought about seeing Donna in the morning when she came to collect Mary. Donna lived across the bridge in Superior and worked as a legal secretary. Clark was in Gary, living in the white concrete block house that had once belonged to his parents. For five years, he had shared Mary with Donna from a distance, and for five years, he had hated the arrangement so much that it felt like a disease inside him.

It wasn’t Donna’s fault. The bitterness between them had long ago died into loneliness. They had married young and tried to make a go of it, but the pressure of raising Mary together had destroyed them. They each loved their daughter, but Mary demanded so much that they had run out of energy to love each other. Donna thought they should try again. She had made noises about making a fresh start. Two weeks earlier, when she had come to his house to drop Mary off, she had stayed there all evening, the three of them together like in the old days. After Mary went to bed, they had drunk wine, and laughed, and wound up sleeping together. They were kids again, the way it was before Mary, before the divorce. The sex felt warm and familiar. But when he awoke, he was alone. Donna couldn’t face him. That told him all he needed to know.

He knew he should go to bed, but he didn’t get up from the sofa. He watched television until his eyes began to blink shut and his head fell forward on his chest. He slept heavily, as if he had been drugged by exhaustion and alcohol, and had no sense of time passing.