A WEEK AFTER THEIR daughter’s death, Sarah could not stop thinking about her. She would taste the skin of the little girl, a kiss, the moment before the chicory of the coffee kicked in, or the sweetness of the muffin blossomed on her tongue. She would pick up a newspaper and feel instead the rubbery band of small socks between her fingers as she folded them over after doing the wash. She’d be in one room and hear the music of her daughter’s voice, the way grammar leaped through her sentences like a frog.
Abe, on the other hand, was starting to lose her. He would close his eyes and try to conjure up his daughter’s face, and he still could, but it was unraveled at the edges a little more each day. He found himself spending hours in her bedroom, inhaling the smell of her strawberry-mango shampoo still trapped in the fibers of the pillowcase, or poring through the books on her shelves and trying to see them through her eyes. He went so far as to open her finger paints, stand stripped to the waist in front of her tiny mirror, draw her heart on his chest.
ALTHOUGH SARAH’S MO WAS usually to do the opposite of whatever her mother told her to do, this time, she took her advice. She showed up at the church, shuddering as she remembered the hymns that had been played at her daughter’s funeral, steeling herself for the absence of the coffin at the altar. She knocked on the pastor’s office door, and he ushered her inside and gave her a cup of tea. “So,” the pastor said, “your mother’s worried about you.”
Sarah opened up her mouth to say something snippy and typically awful, but she caught herself in time. Of course her mother was worried. That was the job description, wasn’t it? That was why she had come.
“Can I ask you something?” Sarah said. “Why her?”
“I don’t understand…”
“I get the whole God thing. I get the kingdom of heaven. But there are millions of seven-year-olds out there. Why did God take mine?”
The pastor hesitated. “God didn’t take your daughter, Sarah,” he said. “Illness did.”
Sarah snorted. “Sure. Pass the buck when it’s convenient.” She could feel herself dangerously at the edge of breaking down, and wondered why on earth she’d thought it was a good idea to come here.
The pastor reached for her hand. His were warm and papery, familiar. “Heaven’s an amazing place,” he said softly. “She’s up there, and she’s looking down on us, right now, you know.”
Sarah felt her throat tighten. “My daughter,” she said, “can’t ride a ski lift without hyperventilating. She panics in elevators. She doesn’t even like bunk beds. She’s terrified of heights.”
“Not anymore.”
“How do you know that?” Sarah exploded. “How do you know that there’s anything afterward? How do you know it doesn’t just…end?”
“I don’t know,” the pastor said. “But I can hope. And I truly believe that your daughter is in heaven, and even if she does still get scared, Jesus will be there to keep her safe.”
She turned away as a tear streaked down her cheek. “She doesn’t know Jesus,” Sarah said. “She knows me.”
ABE FOUND HIMSELF DEFYING gravity. He’d be standing in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, and he’d find himself rising to the balls of his feet. He could not walk fast down the street without starting to float between strides. He started to put stones in the pockets of his pants, which were all too long for him now.
He was sitting on his daughter’s bed one Saturday, remembering a conversation they’d had. Can I still live here when I get married? she’d asked, and he’d grinned and said that would be perfectly fine.
But what about your husband? he’d asked.
His daughter had considered this carefully. Well, we could set up the cot, like when I have a sleepover.
The doorbell rang, and when Abe went downstairs, he found the little girl his daughter had considered her best friend—the last one who’d used that cot, actually—standing red eyed beside her mother. “Hi, Abe,” the woman said. “I hope this isn’t too much of an imposition.”
“No!” he said, too brightly. “No! Not at all!”
“It’s just that Emily’s having some trouble, with, well, you know. She drew a picture, and wanted to bring it here. She thought maybe you could hang it up.” The little girl thrust out a piece of paper toward Abe: a crayon drawing of two little girls—one dark-haired, like his daughter, one fair, like Emily. They were holding hands. There was a melting sun overhead, and grass beneath their feet.
Abe realized he was nearly at a level with Emily; he barely had to crouch down to look her in the eye. “This is beautiful, honey,” he said. “I’m going to put it up right over her bed.” He reached out as if to touch the crown of her head, but realized that this might hurt him more than it would offer comfort, and at the last minute pulled his arm back to his side.
“Are you all right?” Emily’s mother whispered. “You look…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to find the right word, and then she just gave up and shook her head. “Well. Of course you’re not all right. I’m so sorry, Abe. I truly am.” With one last look, she took Emily’s hand and started to walk down the driveway.
Abe held the crayon picture in his hand so tightly that it crumpled. He watched Emily kick the unraked leaves along the sidewalk, setting up small tornadoes as her mother looked straight ahead, not even aware that she was missing this one small, wonderful thing.
SARAH AND ABE DID not really speak to each other, not until Abe walked into their daughter’s room and found Sarah taking the books off the shelves and putting them into boxes. “What are you doing?” he asked, stricken.
“I can’t move past this,” Sarah said, “knowing it’s all right down the hall.”
“No,” Abe answered.
Sarah hesitated. “What do you mean, no?”
Abe reached into one of the boxes and took out a fistful of picture books, jammed them back onto the shelf. “Just because you’re ready to give her up,” he said, “doesn’t mean I am.”
Sarah’s face bloomed with color. “Give her up?” she whispered. “Is that what you think I’m doing? For God’s sake, Abe, all I want to do is function like a normal human being again.”
“But you’re not normal. We’re not normal.” His eyes filled with tears. “She died, Sarah.”