His brow peaks with the mention of my college roommate. He drapes a curl over my ear. “You don’t have to beat yourself up for the rest of your life, you know. Natasha moved on. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”
“I know, but being friends with her was easy. Not like it is with Claudette or even anyone in Old Town. Is friendship supposed to be so . . . forced?”
“You’ve got a lot on your plate. Things will fall into place for us. I promise. We’ll have more babies. We’ll have friends . . .”
I hold my tongue, but I want to tell him he can’t will these things to be.
“My mom’ll be back from Europe in a couple of weeks,” he says. “Maybe she can come help for a while after our embryos are implanted, until we’re out of the woods, until we see little blips of heartbeats on sonograms.”
“I’m sure she’ll be in the throes of another benefit for the hospital group before long, and besides, she won’t leave your father for more than a week anyway. If only you’d consider reconciling with him—”
“Man’s a tyrant.”
“They could both come, is what I’m saying. I could meet him. He could get to know his granddaughter while Shell plans her next seminar or charity event.”
“Nicki. No.”
I stare into his clouded eyes. I never knew my father; to think Micah has one and doesn’t care to know him . . .
“I know he made some mistakes,” I say, “but if Shell’s forgiven him, maybe, with time . . . I just think a man should have a relationship with his father, shouldn’t he? If it’s at all possible?”
“We’re better off,” Micah says crisply. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I figured as much, and I have no choice but to understand and accept his decision. Whatever happened, happened long ago. I have my own demons of memories locked behind doors.
“My mother will come,” he says. “You’ll make it in the meantime.”
“I’m so tired.”
“I know. You’re not sleeping.”
It’s another side effect of the medication.
“Take a pill tonight.”
“No.” The last time I took a pill, I woke up in a panic, feeling as if someone had been inside the house and I’d been too zonked out to notice. “What would happen if Bella needed me and I couldn’t wake up?”
“You have to sleep.”
“Well, you’re leaving, and I’m on my own, so I guess I’ll have to sleep when you come back.”
“Nicki.”
A cheap shot. I knew constant travel was part of the package when I married a pilot. I also know Micah would take the shots and gain baby weight if he could. He’d have the baby for me if he could. “It’s just that I have a headache all the time, and those people at Bella’s school . . . if they knew, some days, how difficult it is to get that child ready and out the door—with Nini, to boot—”
“What do you have to do to get Nini ready?” He’s laughing, still rubbing my belly. “Tie her shoes? Braid her hair?”
“You laugh. But yes. She makes everything more difficult.”
“And Doctor Russo thinks it’s best to play along,” Micah confirms. “Pretend this demon child living in our daughter’s hair is really there.”
“That’s what he said.”
“Okay.” He drums his fingers against my tummy. “Then let’s set some ground rules. Just like we did when Bella got her tricycle.”
Before I have a chance to respond, he’s calling into the great room: “Bella? Bella, can you come here for a minute?”
“No,” she pips.
“Come on, sugar cube.”
She glances over her shoulder at us—“We’re busy”—and turns back to her coloring table. “Nini, that’s mean.”
I raise an eyebrow in a silent I-told-you-so.
He tries again: “Bella? Do you want ice cream?”
“Yes, yes, yes!” She’s jumping up and down now. “For Nini, too!”
“Of course Nini can have ice cream. Come on into the kitchen.”
I’m on my way to the freezer.
“Can you bring it in here? We’re busy.”
“No,” Micah says. “You know the rules.”
“Nini says you don’t follow the rules.”
My head snaps up the moment I hear her tone. “Elizabella!”
“Well, I’m a grown-up,” Micah says. “Sometimes I don’t have to follow the rules. And if you don’t come into the kitchen, you won’t get ice cream at all.”
“Thanks a lot.” Bella slams a crayon down on the table. “Mommy’s mad all the time, but now you made Daddy mad, too.” With her arms across her chest, she puffs out her darling, chubby cheeks so they look like pink apples and makes her way toward us.
I bite back a laugh—she’s so dramatic—but Micah doesn’t contain his, which only serves to frustrate Bella more.
“No laughing!”
“Ice cream, Mike?” Just as I turn to pull three dishes from the cabinet, I hear a crash and a wail. By the time I turn around, he’s already scooped up our daughter, who is a cuddly, weepy ball in his arms. “What happened?”
Bella screeches, “Nini pushed me!” just as Micah explains that she tripped.
“It’s okay.” Micah sits at the table, still holding Bella on his lap. “Ice cream makes it all better.”
I scoop out one heap of strawberry into a silver dessert dish, then another, and two into the third for my husband, who makes ice cream part of his daily routine—not that his waistline tells the tale. He’ll eat Nini’s ice cream, as well as whatever Bella doesn’t finish, but he’ll be no worse for wear on the scale tomorrow.
I slide one dish in front of Bella, one toward an empty chair, and the dish with two scoops I hand to Micah.
“None for you?” he asks.
“I’m up seventeen pounds with the treatment.” I show him my left hand. “I can’t even take off my ring.”
“It’s for a good cause,” he reminds me. “And you’re still stunning.”
“And you’re blind with love.”
“So. Why don’t you tell Daddy about this picture Nini drew?” He nods toward the drawing we’ve been perusing, and spoons a bit of ice cream for Bella and offers to feed her.
She allows it, despite the fact that she’s a big girl now and wouldn’t tolerate such an offer from me on her best day. I take the seat next to them.
“You like it?” Elizabella turns her head to look up at her daddy. Her angel-soft hair brushes against his chin, snagging on the whiskers of a five-o’clock shadow.
“I love it. Nini must be an artist.”
“She is.”
An artist. Like my mother.
“What’s the story behind it? Who’s this?” He points to a figure I assume is human, floating in the middle of the page amid black chevrons and red swirls.
“That’s you, Daddy.”
“What am I doing?”
“Flying.”
This makes sense. Micah has been a pilot with Diamond Corporation for only a few months, but before that, he flew with a commercial airline. He’s flown since before she was born. She doesn’t know a life without planes.
“Flying without his plane?” I ask, although Bella and I have been through this conversation before.
“Silly Mommy. The plane went to God Land in the water.”
I freeze, and a chill runs through my system. She did not say that the first time I asked. Micah looks up and meets my gaze. He’s wearing a look of concern.
“And here’s the water, where the plane is,” Bella says, as matter-of-fact as if she were telling me the water is wet. Her chubby finger travels over the page. “And the place over here is where the big house is.”
I swallow over the lump in my throat. “There’s a big house?”
“A very big house,” she tells me.
“Is it an imaginary house?” Micah asks. “Or a real house?”
“Real.”
“Real like Nini?”
“Nini goed there once.”
This time, when my husband looks at me, it’s with relief, as if to say, There you have it. God Land is a haven for her imaginary friend.
But because I’m not especially comfortable with Nini, knowing my daughter has now created an imaginary place to put her does little to calm my anxieties.
“Want me to draw it for you?”
“Would you do that?” My fingers tremble as I push the morbid scribblings a few inches forward on the table. “It’s a beautiful drawing.”
From Micah’s lap, she reaches for me and presses a hand to each of my cheeks. “We can ’member him when he’s gone.”
All is silent, except for the sound of the neighbor’s landscaping crew blowing leaves.
I’m staring into my daughter’s eyes.