As I pull up to Laney’s preschool, I ponder that reply and grapple with the disappointment that comes with realizing this bond between us will never go beyond friends with benefits. I can live with that if he’s still my friend, but as much as I wish it could be more, I won’t force myself—or my three young kids—on a man who doesn’t want what I do.
Laney is full of delightful chatter and news as always, and as we drive to the elementary school to get her brother and sister, we hear a long story about an exploding juice box that has her laughing so hard, she can barely breathe. She’s so damned cute and sweet, and I love her unreasonably, which is such a relief.
For a time after Mike died, I was so overwhelmed by caring for an infant on top of two other children that I resented her. It’s not something I’m proud of now—and I’ve never told another living soul I felt that way about her, even my mother. It was all caught up in my anger at him for dying after talking me into a third child. I don’t think about that time very much anymore, but the little girl I once saw as a burden has become my daily ray of sunshine.
Tyler comes bursting out of school and runs for the car, holding a box in his hand that he waves around as he comes toward us. “I won aTitanicmodel today! Can we put it together when we get home? I bet there’s a YouTube video on how to do it.”
Sophia, my dawdler, gets in the car, buckles in and blows a kiss to Laney, who is always thrilled to see her big sister after a long day apart.
“Mom!” Tyler says as I pull out of the pickup line. “Can we make the model?”
“I’ll check after dinner,” I tell him.
“I can help,” Gage says. “I used to build models all the time.”
“Awesome,” Tyler says. “We learned all about theTitanictoday in the library. Did you know it hit an iceberg andsank?”
“What’s an iceberg?” Sophia asks.
“Duh,” Tyler says, “it’s a block of ice in the water.”
“Be nice, Tyler,” I tell him.
“Did people die?” Sophia asks.
“Like fifteen hundred. They froze like Popsicles.”
“Tyler!”
Gage shakes with silent laughter, and it’s all I can do not to lose it laughing, too. Honestly, the things that come out of Tyler’s mouth. And why are they teaching second graders about fifteen hundred people dying on theTitanic?
“They weren’t like Popsicles,” I tell Sophia, concerned that she’ll never eat another one.
“What’s a Popsicles?” Laney asks.
“Duh,” Tyler says.
“We’re going to have a conversation about kindness if you keep saying that D-word, young man.”
“It’s a frozen treat on a stick,” Sophia tells her sister. “We had them last summer, and they turned your lips red, remember?”
I catch Laney nodding when I glance in the mirror.
“Did my daddy like Popsicles?” Laney asks.
“He loved orange ones,” I tell her. She asks questions about Mike every day. I never know what it’s going to be as she builds a profile of the father she never knew. She was a newborn when he died. We have only thirty-two photos of the two of them together that I put into a picture book that she looks at so often, I’ve had to reprint it twice.
“Mommy, are you going to have more babies?” Sophia asks. “Lauren’s mom is having another baby, but she said you can’t because we don’t have a daddy.”
“Jesus,” Gage says under his breath.
“I have all the babies I could ever want,” I tell her, even as my heart breaks once again.
“I want an orange Popsicles,” Laney says. “Like my daddy.”
I catch her staring at pictures of Mike all the time, looking for answers to questions she doesn’t know how to ask yet. But she will. I worry about all three of them, but her thirst for details about Mike makes me worry about how she’ll fill the blank places where he should be.
“Mr. Gage, can you stay for dinner so we can work on the model?” Tyler asks. “Mom, can he stay?”