Page 72 of Loving at 40

Frickity-frack! “Why would you say such a thing?” I ask.

Rosie points at Talia with enough anger to seriously poke someone’s eye out. “She said he’s dead.”

“Talia,” I snap, turning toward my eldest daughter, rushing to the side of Rosie’s bed to soothe her while lowering her hand where a single finger is aimed at her sister. “Talia, why would you say that?”

“Because he disappeared just like Daddy did.”

Goodness. “Oh Talia, baby. No, it’s not like that.” While Archer did disappear from our lives, he isn’t dead. I refuse to believe he’s dead. Shaking the thought away, I address her again while rubbing a hand up and down Rosie’s back. “We’ve talked about this. Daddy’s in heaven.”

“Where I can’t see him,” Talia reminds me, and I rub at my forehead. Death is so difficult to explain to a young child.

“He’s gone, but he didn’t disappear. Remember, Daddy can see you. He’s thinking of you and watching you, but not in a creepy way. He’s not hiding in the closet or under the bed. He just knows things about you. Like a guardian angel.” Like a silent protector.

“But why can’t I know things about him?”

“Because it doesn’t work that way, baby.” I’ve never been great at explaining death, and sometimes I’m surprised by these conversations as Talia doesn’t seem to remember her father as much as she knows she had one once. Rosie doesn’t understand the concept of a dad other than other people have a daddy and she doesn’t, at least not one physically present. “You need to keep living and let Daddy see all the great things you’ll do and become.”

“Can Archer see me?” Talia’s question surprises me. Not because of this death discussion but because she was so cautious of Archer at first. She didn’t trust him, but she was slowly warming up to him when he vanished.

“No, honey. Archer can’t see you.”

“Because he isn’t dead,” Rosie interjects with the wisdom of a three-year-old.

“It’s not because he’s not dead.” I sigh. “Archer has an important job, and he had to return to it sooner than I thought. He’s sorry he didn’t say goodbye. Do you remember Tricia’s friend, Levi Walker? He didn’t disappear. He just went away because he has an important job on the other side of the world.” My best teacher friend was close to her ex-husband’s younger brother, who is now an adult and proudly serving in the United States military.

“Or Lys, your favorite babysitter. She didn’t disappear. She just went away to college. She’s been gone for a long time, but she isn’t dead. Just because we no longer see someone does not mean they died.” I narrow in on Talia, disappointed in this fear she’s put in her younger sister, but I also understand that when people leave our lives, it’s difficult to explain why or where they went, especially in this case when I don’t have concrete answers.

Plus, I have no idea if I’m telling the truth about Archer’s return to work, or his sorrow at not seeing the girls one last time. For now, it will have to be the truth. The alternative is accepting he ran off with his drug lord princess, and he’s off doing nefarious deeds I don’t want to consider him doing.

“He’ll be back,” Rosie states, and I swear her voice sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger from the Terminator, but she’s decades too young to know the reference. “He can’t die. He’s a warrior.”

Oh boy. “Who told you that?” I ask, chuckling at how confident Rosie is about both Archer’s return and his occupation.

“Archer did. He told me warriors are invincible, and he’s a warrior. He isn’t dead.” Her little lips puff and her eyes well. “He wouldn’t leave another warrior behind, and I’m a warrior, too.”

“Oh, Rosie.” I swipe my thumbs under her eyes, which spill at the thought of him leaving her.

“I’m sure wherever he is, he misses his princesses.”

“I’m a warrior,” Rosie states again.

“I thought you were a pirate,” I tease, recalling how proud she’d been this summer when Trevor called her such a thing.

“She’s only three, Mom. She doesn’t know who she is yet.”

I chuckle at Talia’s motherly tone. She could be a warrior, falling second-in-command to me.

“We’re our own team of warrior princess pirates, right?” I reach for Talia’s hand, wiggling my fingers for her to grab them in the space between the beds. “We’re doing okay, just us three, right?”

It hasn’t always been easy raising two little babies on my own while working full time and trying to keep up with the bills on my salary, but we’ve made it this far. We have our home and each other. We don’t need more.

“I still miss Archer,” Rosie whispers.

“Me too, baby.” Me too. Because despite not needing him, I’d still like him to be here with us. I’d like to think we could have built something together. I saw us as a family. Maybe that was just wishful thinking, though. Like believing in something you can’t see—like the father my girls don’t remember.

I don’t want them to forget Archer.

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