“What is it?” Andrea asks, lifting onto her tiptoes to stare over Laurel’s shoulder.
“You have to see.”
Delicately, Laurel removes a fragile bird’s nest from inside. “It’s a robin’s nest. We found it over in Lighthouse Field one day,” she explains. “Our treasure, we called it. Of course everything was treasure back then.”
Andrea peers at the downy husk of a nest, her blue eyes sparkling. “It’s really old, then.”
“Yeah, it is,” Laurel agrees quietly, and her voice fills with a wistful tone I understand completely. Alex should be here. But Laurel shakes the mood, her clear blue eyes widening mischievously. “I want to tell you a story about your daddy,” she says and Andrea kneels in front of her, nodding encouragingly. “Did you know that he always knew you were coming one day?”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But he did. Whenever we played games up here, and imagined that we were a prince and a princess in the turret, he would say, ‘let’s remember this and bring our kids up here one day.’” I’m not sure where Laurel’s going, but I listen intently, feeling Becca’s heartbeat beneath my hand. She’s wearing this soft, oversized sweater that lets me nestle her right up against me, be as brazen as I want.
Laurel goes on: “'Let’s play like it’s later,’ he’d say.”
“What do you mean?” Andrea asks.
“He always wanted to pretend that we had grown up and that there was another little princess. He was the daddy and she was the little girl.”
“Is that true?” Andrea asks, her voice breathy and quiet. Frankly, I’m thinking Laurel must’ve made this story up, until she reaches into the window seat and retrieves something else, something that must be fragile and precious from the way she holds it in the palm of her hand. Then I see it, and it’s unbelievable. Three tiny sculpted figures. “I made these for his Christmas present,” she explains, revealing two little red-haired children, a boy and a girl. “When we were ten. Look, this is the other princess,” she says, showing a redheaded little girl.
“Wow! He knew I was coming,” Andrea says in wonder, and whether it’s even precisely true or not doesn’t really matter as she cradles the little figurine in her palm. She feels known, wanted. She feels as if she were destined in some way to be linked to the man she will always remember as father.
“You have no idea how much he wanted us to have you.”
She nods, pressing the little child doll to her lips, and just stares out at the ocean. Pensive, as she often gets, and none of us push her. After a while, she quietly asks, “Aunt Laurel?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“He really was my daddy, wasn’t he? Even though he was my uncle, he really was my daddy, right? In the ways that count?”
“Oh, yes, pumpkin. Absolutely.”
Andie cradles the little figure in her hand for a moment, then delicately, almost prayerfully, places it back into the bottom of the window seat. Like she’s offering a benediction.
Then she turns back to us, focusing on Laurel. “Aunt Laurel, can I ask you something else?”
“Anything.”
“What do I call you now? Now that I know you’re my mother?”
Laurel kneels there, right down on Andrea’s level. “Whatever feels right, pumpkin,” she says. “You can call me Aunt Laurel, like you always have.”
“Or Mom?” Andie suggests, her blue eyes hopeful.
“If that feels right, that’s okay too,” she answers with a gentle smile. “I carried you for nine months, Andrea, and there’s a place inside of me that will always belong to you. I will always be your mother, no matter what you decide to call me.”
“When Daddy and Rebecca get married, I might call Rebecca Mom too,” Andrea says softly. “That won’t make you mad, will it?”
I feel Rebecca’s body tense against mine; know that she’s holding her breath. This is the first either of us has heard of this request.
Laurel nods her encouragement. “Of course that’s okay.”
“You know, I’m lucky,” Andrea says with a shy smile, glancing back at Rebecca for a moment. “’Cause I’ve had two daddies. And I get to have two mothers too. Not everybody gets that.”
Laurel whispers, “And I’m lucky, because I have you.”
Andrea hurls herself into Laurel’s arms, burying her face against her birthmother’s chest. For endless moments, they hold one another, Laurel stroking her long shiny hair, Andie snuggling even closer. “I love you, Andrea,” Laurel says, and I see tears glint in her eyes. “Very much, sweetheart.”
“I love you too,” says Andrea, her voice muffled. Then she leans back and stares right up at me. Fixing me with that unnerving, blue-eyed look that sometimes reminds me so much of Alex, she asks, “Daddy? I’m glad I know the truth.” I can’t help the tears that instantly mist my eyes. “That you really are my daddy.”