Chapter 6: Say His Name

The dental office on Saturday morning is always full.

By nine there were seven people in the waiting room: two kids with coloring books, an old man with a cane, and four women in church-lunch cardigans.

I sat in the corner with June asleep in the carrier on my lap.

I was on leave. I had no reason to be there except that Ben had asked me to be.

"Bring the baby," he had texted on Friday night. "I want him to say it in front of her."

Ben stood behind the front desk in his green cardigan with his hands flat on the counter.

His husband sat in the chair beside me with a tray of coffees on his knees and said nothing at all.

At five to nine, the glass door swung open.

Daniel came in with a bunch of grocery-store roses in one hand.

He saw me, and his face went from hope to worry to guilt. Then he saw Ben, and he looked at the waiting room.

"Ben," he said. "Can we talk somewhere private?"

"No."

"I just want to..."

"You texted me last night," Ben said, pleasantly. "You said you wanted to talk. I said Saturday at nine, at my office. Here we are."

"I meant in the back."

"I don't do apologies in the back. It wastes time. Please say my name."

The old man with the cane turned a page of his magazine very slowly.

Daniel cleared his throat.

"Ben."

"Now say what you said about me."

"Ben, come on."

"In the hospital. To a nurse." Ben's voice was still level. "And then in a message to sixty-one people at three in the morning. Say it."