My command was short, sharp and without explanation, which was about all her fevered brain could hear right now.
“Get into bed.”
She moved with a kind of jagged, jerking gait that hurt me to watch, but she backed up, getting into bed and letting me wrap the blanket really tight around her, some part of her remembering that the deep pressure and tight fit helped soothe her. But of course, when the anger died down, the tears came, silently now, streaming down her face. I tapped out a quick message as she lay there.
L: Evie is losing it. She wants you. I need you to talk to her and calm her down.
B: Be there in a sec.
L: No. Just reinforces her. Call me in a minute and talk to her. Tell her you love her.
B: I do.
L: Tell her to settle down, sleep and you’ll see her in the morning.
B: K.
I snorted at the response, then turned to my daughter, hoping this would make her feel better, not worse.
“How about you talk to Daddy?” I asked Evie warily and sure enough her eyes brightened. Little hands crept out, wiping away her tears when the phone rang.
“Daddy?”
“Hey little cub.” I put the phone on speaker and Ben’s voice was rich and warm. “Having trouble sleeping?”
“Daddy, I… I… I…”
Fuck, those hysterical little hiccupping words. I hated them so much. They were all the evidence I needed that she was in a bad place.
“I know, love. I know. I need you to lie down now. Can you do that for me?”
Her body seemed to collapse lower into the bed, her small form shrouded in blankets.
“I need you here…” she finally forced out, her words coming out as a noisy exhale.
“I’ll be there in the morning,” he said. “I promise. If you close your eyes and go to sleep now, it’ll feel like no time when I come to wake you up ready for school.” Her eyes closed then, allowing the tiredness, that had her in this state in the first place, to take hold. “I’ll take you to school, all the way up to the gate. We’ll see your friends and you can introduce me to some of them…”
He kept it up for some time, describing boring, mundane little details, but that was exactly what she needed right now. A steady constant reassurance that we were going to be there for her.
“She’s asleep,” I whispered finally, switching off speakerphone and walking out into the hall.
“I’m coming around,” he told me.
“No, you can’t.”
“Evie needs me. She needs us under the same roof, as a family.”
“We are a family,” I replied, “and right now, this is the way our family looks. You’re in a hotel room and I’m here.”
“It doesn’t have to be like that. I can—”
“Yes, it does.” I swallowed then, my tongue feeling twice its size, but I forged on. “I know what you want.” Silence at that. “You want to move in and play happy families. You want to sleep in my bed and wake up with our daughter and get her ready for school every morning.” A long ragged sigh then, like I was describing his hottest fantasy or something. “But what if it doesn’t work?”
“What?”
“You’re Evie’s father, Ben. That’s never going to change, but us?” I thought of my parents’ own arid relationship, very few moments of real affection passing between them. “We don’t know what ‘us’ is. We can’t bring a small child along for the kind of chaotic journey adult relationships go on. If we create something real, something stable, then we introduce her to that, but not now.”
“And what about you?”