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My ribs creaked as I sucked in a breath, my skin getting cold and clammy the longer I stood there—helpless and useless and wrecked down to my core.
“I don’t know what that means, duck,” I whispered brokenly.
Her arms were wrapped so tightly around the stuffed animal that they shook. My hands, still gripping the frame of the crib, eased off the wood, and I shifted toward the wall so that I could lean some of my weight there.
She was so small, and it was bloody unfair that she had to deal with this when she didn’t even know what life had been like before.
Before.
My fist unclenched as I lowered it over her head. The wisps of her curls were soft against my palm as I gently curled it around her skull.
She took a big, shaky breath, her eyes slowly opening in my direction. Her arms still clutched the duck. I slid my hand to the line of her forehead and eased it over her hair again.
“I miss them too,” I told her quietly. I ran my hand over her little locks once more, and slowly, her crying subsided as she stared up at me. “They were my best friends, yeah? It’s so fucking hard to figure out how to live your life when they’re both just ... gone.”
My voice cracked, and Mira hiccuped again, another giant tear spilling over the splotchy skin on her cheek.
Then she inhaled again, and her eyes never left mine.
Bloody hell, I’d have to talk my way through this, wouldn’t I? There’d be no shoving it down or ignoring that it was there, rumbling under the surface.
Not if I really wanted to take care of her the way Chris had wanted me to.
“Your mum was always so nice to me,” I said. I kept my voice low and soothing, my hand still making slow strokes over the top of her silky curls. “The first time I met her, she asked if I was always such an asshole to people. And when I said yes, she laughed and laughed. She had such a good smile, duck.” I swallowed around the growing tightness in my throat. “You’ll have her smile someday, you know? You’ve got her eyes too.” My eyes burned dangerously as I stared down at Mira. “Breaks my heart when I think about how much you look like her.”
Mira sniffled, briefly rubbing her face against the duck, but her tears dwindled as I talked.
“God, I don’t know what I’m doing,” I whispered, my eyes squeezed shut as I dredged up anything I could say to soothe her. I had a decade’s worth of memories of Chris and Amie, moments that numbered into the thousands, all good and all worthy of Mira knowing. How was I supposed to distill an entire friendship into one conversation that would calm her down?
She sniffled again, and I pried my eyes open. Overthinking this wouldn’t help, so I just tugged on the first thread in my mind.
“I wasn’t going to dance at their wedding,” I said in a low voice. “It was a fun party too; that was another thing your parents knew how to do. They always made people comfortable, you know? And I’d almost made it the entire night when your mum came right up to me at my table with some of the guys from the team.” I exhaled a short laugh with a shake of my head. “She held her hand out and said if I didn’t dance with her, it would be bad luck for their marriage. She was so bloody stubborn, and I loved that about her. Because she kept your dad in his place, never let him get away with anything.”
She kept listening. Her tears stopped.
“It was a slow dance,” I told Mira. “I actually know how to dance; Mum made me take lessons when I was twelve. Hated it. But the look on your mum’s face when I actually knew what I was doing was worth every bloody lesson. She smiled so big, duck. I’ll remember that forever.” I pinched my eyes shut again, details pelting me like darts. Like arrows and bullets. “Then she told me about their pretty neighbor that just moved in. Thought I should meet her.”
I had to pause then. For a brief moment, it hurt too much to think about how differently my life could have played out if Amie had gotten her way. If Zoe had been single.
If they were still here to be part of our lives.
But it hadn’t happened that way.
“She thanked me,” I said. “Your mum kissed me on the cheek and told me she loved me, even if I couldn’t say it back, and she thanked me for dancing with her on her wedding day. Don’t know why I didn’t say it that day,” I said in a tortured whisper. “You never know when you’ll regret those little moments, duck. I told her that she looked beautiful and that Chris didn’t deserve her, which made her laugh, but I didn’t fucking tell her I loved her too. Maybe I did later and just don’t remember.”
I scrubbed at my cheek when a single stray tear escaped.
“All right, then,” I managed with a rasp. “Might have to stop talking about your mum. If anyone’s gonna make me cry, it’ll be her. Your dad, though, he was such a shit, and the closest thing I’d ever had to a brother, yeah?”
I told her about playing with Chris. What it was like to have him as a teammate.
Her arms relaxed around the duck, and she kept her eyes on me while her breaths steadied, her blinks lengthening, slowing.
“You’ll hear more about him from everyone as you grow up,” I told her. “You’ll see them talk about him on the telly. You’ll see clips and videos of all the things he did, how good he was on the end of that line.” My chest hollowed, raw and ragged. But I forced the words out, because she deserved to hear them, and Chris deserved to have them said about him. “They’ll tell you all the ways you remind them of your dad, especially if you play any sort of sport, and God, Mira, you can be so proud of that. If you have even a little bit of that man in you, you’ll be such a good fucking human.”
My throat closed up, and I had to stop because my voice cracked again, a trembling deep in my gut that I didn’t dare allow. When I risked a glance at Mira, I saw that her eyelids were fluttering shut.
I breathed out quietly, easing my hand off her hair.
