“I always hoped you’d come back in.”

“Things look different,” I said, looking around.

Joe rolled his eyes. “My son. He’s taking over the place—my back is bad and there’s too much standing around here.” He smiled at me. “How are you?”

I looked out the window to the intersection.

“What do you remember about it?” I swallowed. I hadn’t planned to go in there, I hadn’t planned on talking to him.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he said and put his hands on mine again. He looked out the window with me. “I just remember how distraught you were. You were in shock. Your daughter clung to your waist and wanted to be held, but you couldn’t bend down. You couldn’t move.”

Violet had never done that before—she had never clung to me, never turned to me for comfort in the way other children did with their mothers. Gripping, wanting.

We sat together at a table overlooking the window and watched the traffic lights change and the cars go by. The sky was white.

“Did you see it happen?”

He winced, but didn’t look away from the street. He was thinking about what to say to me. I turned away and then saw him shake his head in my periphery.

“Did you see how the stroller got there?” I tried again and closed my eyes.

“Just one of those terrible, freak accidents.”

I opened my eyes and looked down at his hands folded on the table. He squeezed them together, like he was getting through a shot of pain.

“I’ve thought about you a lot over the years, how you could possibly move on after that.” His eyes became glassy. “I’ve always thanked God you had that little girl to live for.”

* * *

? ? ?

When I got home, the door slammed shut behind me in the gusty November wind and nearly caught my fingers. I sank to the floor and threw my keys against the wall. I thought of Sam, of how his face was just starting to change from the generic pudge of a baby to who he would one day be, of the smell of my sweet milk that was always in the crevice of his neck, of the last tug of my nipple in his mouth when he was finished. Of the way he searched for my face in the dark while he nursed.

I closed my eyes and tried to feel the weight of his body on my lap. I could get there; I could be there. The morning television show playing in the background, the steam of the kettle from the kitchen. The faint sound of Violet’s bare feet upstairs. The running water in the bathroom sink while you shaved for work. The feel of my unwashed hair. The ascending cry from the other room. That life, banal and stifling. But comforting. It was everything. I’d let it all go.

Maybe I’d let him go, too.

81

There had been half a bottle of wine consumed that night, yes. But I’d been thinking about calling you for days. I curled up on the couch while he slept upstairs. On your side of the bed. I wished he hadn’t stayed the night. It was nearly midnight.

I had talked myself through different versions of what I could say to you, but nothing felt right. I didn’t want to apologize for the mother I’d been to her—I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t want to say I was wrong—I didn’t know if I was. I just wanted you to know that something inside of me had changed. And I wanted to see our daughter more.

Gemma answered your phone the third time I called. “Is everything okay?”

Maybe it is, I wanted to reply. Maybe it finally is.

But instead I asked to speak to you. You were beside her in bed, I could hear the sheets move as you rolled over to take the phone.

“I need to see her more. I want to do better.”

I asked you about the painting, the one you took from our bedroom when you moved out. I hadn’t planned to ask you about this, I hadn’t even thought about it that night. But suddenly I wanted it desperately. I stood up and paced the room while you let me sit on the line in silence. I imagined it hanging on a stark white wall in the hallway of your beautiful new home, Gemma touching the gold frame gently while she walked by, thinking of her own small child and the way he touched her face.

“I don’t know where it is.”

82

I picked Violet up from school the next week. She was sitting alone on the cold steps, a boulder in the waterfall of children bounding down around her.

“We can do anything you want this afternoon,” I’d said as she buckled up. “You pick. But we’re going with a new schedule. Every Wednesday and Thursday night with me.”

I watched her text furiously from the corner of my eye.

“I want to go home,” she said eventually, looking out the window.

“We will, but let’s do something fun first. What are you in the mood for?”

“No, I mean home. To Gemma. And Dad.”

“Well, you’re my daughter. And I’m your mother. So we’re going to try to act like it.”

I pulled into the parking lot of a gas station and stopped the car. I didn’t know where to take her. She was turned toward the passenger door, texting, and I realized I hadn’t known she’d been given her own phone.

“Who are you texting?”

“Mom and Dad.”

I didn’t give her a reaction—I knew she was looking for one.