Silent Threshold

The mattress sighed when I left it. A small sound, the kind you don't notice unless you're listening for it, and I was. I always am. Katrin didn't stir. Her breathing kept its slow rhythm, in through the nose, a pause, out through the mouth, like she was counting something in her sleep. I stood there a moment in the half-dark and watched the shape of her under the duvet. Twenty-three years of waking up next to that shape and I still couldn't tell, from the outside, whether she was really asleep or just being quiet.

The floor was cold. I found my bathrobe on the hook behind the door, the blue one with the frayed belt, and pulled it on. It smelled of last night's dinner, onions mostly. I didn't tie it. I never tie it.

The hallway was darker than the bedroom. We keep a nightlight in the socket by the bathroom, one of those cheap LED things Lena picked out when she was six, a little plastic moon that glows orange and does nothing to actually light anything. I walked by feel, hand on the wall, the plaster cool and slightly gritty under my palm. Somewhere behind me the heating pipes ticked. Old building. They always tick.

Then I saw her.

Lena. Standing at the top of the stairs.

She was in her pajamas, the grey ones with the little foxes on them that she's had since she was twelve and refuses to give up even though the cuffs now sit above her ankles. Her hair was loose and tangled on one side, pressed flat on the other, the way it gets when you've been lying on it and turning. She had her back to me. One hand was on the banister, the other was raised, fingers spread, hovering just above the wall beside the stairs.

She wasn't moving.

"Lena?"

She didn't turn. Her fingers stayed where they were, an inch from the wallpaper, like she was reading something written there. I took a step closer. The floorboard under my left foot gave its usual creak, the one we all know to avoid, and I'd stepped on it anyway.

"Lena. What are you doing?"

"I'm counting," she said.

Her voice was flat. Not sleepy. Not upset. Flat the way a table is flat.

"Counting what?"

"The steps." Her hand came down. She turned around then, and her face was calm, and that was the thing that got me. Not confused. Not guilty. Calm. Like she'd been asked a normal question at a normal time of day. "There's fourteen. Did you know that? I always thought there was twelve."

I looked at the stairs. There are fourteen. I've walked them ten thousand times. I never counted.

"It's four in the morning," I said.

"I know."

"Why are you up?"

She shrugged. A small shrug, shoulders barely moving, and she wrapped her arms around herself because the hallway was cold and her pajamas were thin. "I couldn't sleep. So I got up. And then I thought I'd count the steps."

"You could've counted them any time."

"I know," she said again. And then, quieter, "I wanted to see if they'd be the same."

That stopped me. I stood there in my untied bathrobe with the onion smell and the cold floor and I didn't have anything to say to that. Because what do you say. She's fifteen. She's at the age where everything she says either means nothing or means something you're not supposed to ask about, and you can never tell which.

"Come back to bed," I said.

"I'm not tired."

"Then come downstairs and I'll make you tea."

She looked at me for a second. Weighing it. I could see her doing the math, the way she does with everything, deciding whether I was going to be the kind of father who asked more questions or the kind who let it go. I tried to keep my face open. Neutral. The way you're supposed to.

"Okay," she said.

I went down first. She followed. Fourteen steps, and I counted them this time, out of spite or curiosity, I'm not sure which, and there were fourteen, and at the bottom the kitchen was dark and the clock on the oven said 4:07 in green.

I filled the kettle. The tap water here tastes like the pipes, metallic and old, but we've been drinking it for eighteen years so it doesn't matter anymore. Lena sat at the table. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, and she looked small in a way she hasn't looked in years. Small and far away.

"Did something happen at school?" I asked.

"No."

"With Mom?"

"No."

"Then what?"

She didn't answer right away. The kettle started to make its noise, the low rumble that comes before the boil. Outside the window the street was black and wet. It had rained sometime in the night and I hadn't heard it.

"I had a dream," she said finally. "It was weird. That's all. Just a weird dream and then I woke up and I couldn't go back."

"What was it about?"

"I don't remember."

She said it too fast. That's the thing about Lena. She's a terrible liar and she's always been a terrible liar and she knows it, so when she lies she goes fast, like speed will cover it. I poured the water into two cups. Chamomile for her, the same tea she's been drinking since she was small, and I don't know why she drinks it, it tastes like grass. I put the cup in front of her. She wrapped both hands around it and didn't drink.

"Dad," she said.

"Yeah."

"Are you and Mom okay?"

The question landed in the middle of the kitchen like a dropped plate. I stood there with my own cup halfway to my mouth and I felt something in my chest go tight and small.

"Why would you ask that?"

"I don't know." She was looking at the tea now, not at me. "You just seem. I don't know. Different. Lately."

Different. I thought about Katrin upstairs, breathing in her counting rhythm, and I thought about the way we hadn't touched each other in maybe three weeks, not properly, not in the way that used to be automatic, and I thought about the fact that Lena had noticed, that a fifteen-year-old had noticed, and that meant it was real, it wasn't just in my head.

"We're fine," I said.

She nodded. She took a sip of the tea. She didn't believe me, I could see it in her face, but she was going to let it go, and I was grateful for that, and also ashamed that I was grateful. That's the thing nobody tells you about being a father. Half of it is just accepting the mercy your children offer you.

"Go back to bed," I said. "It's late."

"It's early."

"Go back to bed anyway."

She stood. She put her cup in the sink without rinsing it, which Katrin hates, and she walked past me and I caught the smell of her hair, the coconut shampoo she's used since she was thirteen, and then she was on the stairs. I heard her feet on the wood. I heard her stop at the top. I heard her start counting again, quiet, under her breath, and I stood in the kitchen with my tea going cold and I thought, fourteen steps, she's counting the fourteen steps, and I didn't know why that frightened me, but it did.