“No.” He wanted to pound the steering wheel, but he held himself in check. “She wanted you so much. She used to sing to you in utero. ‘Sweet Caroline.’ But she’d change the lyrics to make it ‘Clara-line.’”

“You used to sing that to me.”

“Because she did it first.”

He could see that had thrown her for a loop. She’d thought the song had originated with him.

“Anyway,” she said, “I’m not disputing that she wanted me. I’m just saying that when someone dies in childbirth, it’s not logical to say that it wasn’t the child’s fault.”

“It isn’t anyone’s fault. It’s a thing that happens. Shit happens. People die.”

“Did he hit her?” she asked quietly.

He took a deep breath. They would be returning to this “It’s my fault” business later, but for now it seemed best to answer her questions as honestly as he could. “Not that I know of. But you can hurt people pretty badly without laying a hand on them.”

“Did he hit you?”

He hesitated. “Yeah. After she died, he used to knock me around some, but it wasn’t that bad until one time…” God. His throat felt like it was closing.

“Until one time when it was that bad?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. He kicked my ass, basically. He was getting worse. Drinking more. His rants were longer—and meaner.”

“So we moved out.”

“So we moved out.” She made it sound so easy, but he still remembered the state of perpetual panic he’d been in as he’d looked at apartments and secretly packed their stuff.

“He seems more pathetic than scary to me these days. But maybe that’s just because I’m older.”

He considered that. It was true that they hadn’t had an incident in a year. Charles hadn’t bothered them, and he hadn’t done anything that had required Sawyer’s attention in a professional capacity in that time, either. And tonight he had passed his Breathalyzer. His story of having been caught up in a brawl because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time had been corroborated by witnesses.

Still. “I can’t risk anything happening, Clare Bear. Maybe I’ve been wrong not to talk about him, and hell, I’ll talk about him all you want going forward. I just…I don’t trust him.” He pulled over, cut the engine, and turned to her. “Look. If this was a movie, this would be the part where I realize that you’re not me, where I tell you there’s nothing stopping you from having a relationship with him if you want to. Maybe you’d go do that and find out he’s changed.”

“But…” she prompted.

“I can’t do that.”

“It’s okay. I don’t want that. I just want…”

“What?”