“I know that it has, but I can’t be in your life just for her sake.” She sounds crushed; the distance and order replaced by obvious pain. “That’s not enough for me, and it’s not fair to her, either.”
“That’s not fair. You know it’s not just for her. You know how much I love you. How much I miss you.”
Silence fills the line between us, the sound of blood rushing in my ears my only answer. “Rebecca?” I prompt her.
“I miss you too,” comes her quiet, emotion-filled answer.
“Then see us,” I answer hopefully. “For lunch, today. I’ll come get you.”
“I-I’m not ready yet, Michael.”
“When will you be ready?”
“I’m not sure.”
I open my mouth to tell her I love her; that I want to talk to her, for God’s sake. That I want to spend forever with her; that I can handle anything but this wall of silence—but the phone goes dead before I can reply.
***
My daughter has a perfect, glorious birthday outing, all except for not seeing her favorite celebrity on the lot, Rebecca O’Neill. I mumble a flimsy excuse about Rebecca’s work schedule, and Andrea nods, frowning slightly. But the day’s too fantastic for her to stay down long. We finish off at the commissary, eating together at the cafeteria table.
While we sit together, she keeps looking around, like she’s searching for someone. Hoping to spot Rebecca, perhaps. Finally, I ask, “Who you looking for?”
She stares down at her plate of food, picking at it. I’m pretty sure she won’t answer, but she surprises me.
“Daddy brought me here. Remember?” She looks up at me, her clear eyes shining bright. “That last day before he died.”
With all that happened the next day—with all that’s happened since—I never even thought about it. “No, I didn’t… I didn’t remember that.”
She nods, looking around again. “It was last day of school, remember?” she prompts me, cocking her head sideways as she studies me. “You both came to my party, and we were gonna have lunch here, but you had a job to do.”
“So Daddy brought you by himself,” I finish.
She nods her head, glancing around the cafeteria. “I kinda kept thinking about it. Later,” she admits. “That it was the last thing he ever did with just me. The last really special thing.” Her mood grows serious, and she glances around the commissary again. “We played a game together. We kept trying to see how many people we could find in weird costumes. He said he wanted to be an extra and play an alien one day.”
“That sounds like Daddy,” I agree and we both laugh.
“How come Rebecca didn’t want to see me?” she asks with a slight frown. “Is she mad at me? ’Cause if I did something to make her not like me…”
“Andrea, sweetie, no.” My voice becomes firm. “It’s not you. Rebecca’s got some issues with me.”
“Is she mad at you?”
I blow out a breath. “It’s kind of complicated.”
She takes a drink from her milk, sipping through her straw, and then asks, “Complicated for her? Or for us?” The amazing wisdom of my almost nine-year-old.
“You know how we’ve been through some hard stuff?” I begin, choosing my words carefully. “In the past year? Losing Daddy and learning to be on our own, all that stuff?” She nods, taking another sip of milk, her eyes never leaving me. “Well, Rebecca’s been through some tough times too. Some really hard stuff.”
She leans close across the table, dropping her voice. “At the beach, I heard Aunt Marti talking to Casey. She said somebody tried to kill Rebecca. That’s how come she’s got all those scars.” She searches my face. “Is that really true?”
I don’t want to upset her, but she deserves to understand the facts. “I think we’re probably all very lucky we still have Rebecca.”
“You mean ’cause she could’ve died,” she clarifies. “’Cause that’s what Rebecca told me. She said she understood about what happened to me. That she almost died and all that.”
“She understood about you being in the accident?” I’m not sure what Andie’s saying precisely, and at first she doesn’t elaborate further. But then, without looking up, she whispers, “I told her maybe I should’ve died.”
My mouth goes dry. She’s offering my first real glimpse into what has haunted her since the accident, and I know that what I say next is crucial. Like that first night she met Rebecca, she’s trying in her own nine-year-old way to communicate with me.
I clear my throat. “What did…Rebecca say about that?”
She shrugs, glancing around the commissary again, as if she’s searching for Alex here among all the other crazily clad actors and extras. As if he might have been hiding here, ever since that last day they were here together. “So what are we gonna do now?” she asks, directing the subject away from this topic that I desperately want to explore.