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“Duck?” I asked. “Where’d you go?”
Her voice came from the top of the stairs. “Mommy and Daddy here?” she asked.
My stomach bottomed out, landing somewhere by my feet, and I was fairly sure that it had yanked my heart out of place on its way down.
Had Zoe put this one in the binder? Some neatly colored tab that would tell me what I was supposed to say to her when she asked this question?
I scratched the side of my face while I walked up the stairs. “No, little duck,” I said gently. “They’re not here.”
She stared into the room. “They still gone?”
“Yeah.” My voice sounded like I’d shredded it with knives. Rusty, broken knives.
Most days, I couldn’t figure out what I believed about God or death or the afterlife. What this whole bloody existence in the world even meant.
I went to church on Christmas and Easter, and I was smart enough not to pray before games, because I knew whoeverwasup there didn’t give a shit whether we won.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel like meeting Chris, standing there with his kid, was the act of some invisible hand of destiny. That someone had orchestrated the pieces on the chessboard, positioning us exactly where we needed to be. That Zoe moving in next door to them was meant to be. A single other decision made by either of us and who knows what might have happened to Mira?
Maybe that was a divine hand moving us all into place. Maybe it was all fucking chance. I might never know.
But I sure as hell wouldn’t be having a theological talk with this little girl until I checked with Valentine.
“Come on, duck.” I held out my hand. “Let’s go do some bubbles, yeah?”
It was too late, though. Her mood, it seemed, was already ruined by thoughts of her parents.
For the rest of the day, we battled.
She didn’t want to eat anything I made for her, except some horrible sugary cereal, which I allowed because I was too fucking tired to worry about it.
She didn’t want to play outside, knocking over the bubbles and then crying because we couldn’t get them back in the bottle.
She wouldn’t nap, and if there was one thing I could not do, it was stand there while a little kid cried their eyes out, stuck in their bed because I’d put them there.
We watchedMoanatwo more times, and I’d probably be singing the songs in my sleep before long, but it made her happy, so I didn’t care.
By bedtime, I saw the meltdown ramping up in her big eyes.
I was braced for it.
She fought me through putting on clean pajamas. Fought me through brushing her teeth.
Even handing her the stuffed duck in her crib didn’t help. She ignored it, tears flowing steadily, her face growing hot and red as she lay there and cried.
“I want Mommy and Daddy,” she sobbed.
“I wish they were here too,” I told her. I scrubbed a hand over my face, unsure of what to do. She wasn’t reaching for me; she simply lay there, her tiny chest heaving with body-racking sobs. “You have no idea how much I wish that, little bit.”
She hiccuped through her tears. “Mommy hold you,” she said urgently. Mira turned to the duck in her crib and finally clutched it to her chest. “Mommy hold you.”
I didn’t know what that meant. Whatever it was cleaved my chest in fucking two, because I couldn’t do anything about it. I braced my hands on the side of the crib and hung my head down toward my chest, completely out of my fucking depth.
It didn’t seem possible that this one room could contain everything she was holding in her tiny body. If I had looked up and seen the walls splitting at the seams, I wouldn’t have been surprised. That’s how my own flesh and bones felt, absorbing all the sadness swelling between me and Mira.
If I pressed down, it would all come spilling out, like liquid from a sponge that had been sitting in water for too long.
“Mommy hold you,” she sobbed again. Her eyes pinched shut, and big, fat tears rolled down her reddened cheeks.
