She eagerly nodded. “Yes, I want to be best friends.”
“BFF. Best friends forever. Can you draw a B and an F and another F on the page right here?” I asked, pointing to the blank spot in the upper right hand corner.
Carefully, she set the coloring book on the white carpet and began to draw the three letters with her cornflower blue crayon. They came out perfectly, and I leaned over to hug her.
“You do such an incredible job with your letters, Grace. You’re going to do so great in kindergarten next year.”
A big smile lit up her round little face. “I can’t wait!”
As I started to tell her about my first day in kindergarten when I drank my milk too fast and it came shooting out of my nose and got all over my yellow dress, Nico appeared in the doorway. I knew by his expression he had bad news.
“Hey, girls. What’s going on?”
Grace proudly held up her coloring book to the F page. “I made an F. F is for friend. Tia and I are best friends. Right, Tia?”
“Right,” I said, forcing a smile so she didn’t know how torn up I felt inside. “Best friends forever.”
“Grace, I need to speak to Tia for a minute. She’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
The confused look on her face told me she had no idea what he meant, so I gently tapped her on the nose and said, “I’ll be back soon. You move on to your next letter. I’ll come back when your uncle and I finish talking, okay?”
As always, she followed my instructions and moved on to the letter G as I stood up and walked over to where Nico stood in the doorway. With every step, my heart sank more and more as I stared at his face and knew things hadn’t worked out.
He didn’t say anything at first, but then he simply shook his head and frowned. I needed to hear what really happened, though.
“What? They didn’t wholesale say no to everything you asked for, did they?” I asked, barely able to hold back the tears.
Nico focused his attention on the floor and sighed. “I did everything I could, Tia. The law is the law. It’s not right, but there’s very little grey area when it comes to parents’ rights.”
“Well, it’s not right!” I said loudly and then quickly looked into the room to see if Grace had heard anything.
She sat there happily coloring the letter G’s page in a beautiful hot pink color, oblivious to the fact that the adults in her world were busy talking about what was going to happen next to her. I hated the idea of her being taken away. I hated it so much I wanted to scream. She didn’t even know this father of hers, and now she’d have to get used to him and another strange place.
Nico took my hand in his and I turned back to focus on him. “I did everything I could. I hope you know that.”
As tears filled my eyes, I tried to keep calm but I couldn’t. I was angry and sad and scared, and I didn’t know what to do with any of those emotions.
“It’s not right. She’s going to be so frightened. She’s going to cry, and what if he doesn’t know how to handle a little girl crying and he hits her or tries some other way to discipline her?”
“I won’t let that happen. I promise. I’ll make sure to keep an eye on him and her. They’re only going to be in the city since it seems he has wealthy parents and that’s how he gets to devote his life to the dream of finding the perfect wave.”
I wiped the tears from my face as what he said filtered through my brain. “What does that mean? Is he some kind of surfer guy? He isn’t going to want to stay here for long then. He’s going to want to take her to wherever waves are. California? They have waves there, right? Australia! They have beaches and waves there too. I saw it on a nature special I watched one night. Nico, he’s going to take her halfway around the world!”
He pulled me to him, probably because I was unraveling like a cheap suit right there in the hallway, and whispered, “It’s not going to be like that. I promise. He says he plans to stay in the city until my sister gets out, so Grace will be right nearby.”
All I wanted to do was bawl my eyes out, even if he was telling the truth and Grace wasn’t going to be whisked away to another continent. I couldn’t do that, though, or she’d know something was terribly wrong. She didn’t need the adult she trusted most in the world falling apart.
“He better not because I’ll find a way to get to Australia or wherever he takes her,” I whispered into the shoulder of Nico’s suit coat.
Both of us knew it was nothing but an empty threat, but I didn’t care.
“Tia, I finished G. Want to see?” Grace called out.
I quickly wiped under my eyes and took a deep breath. She couldn’t see me upset. I didn’t want the last few times she saw me to be anything but wonderful.
“Of course I want to see it,” I said in my best pretend happy voice. “I’ll be right in!”
“He’s coming tonight, Tia.”