The sun is shining outside, light streaming through the open apartment windows, warming the place with a soft glow. A breeze flows through the screens, ruffling the thin white curtains as some current pop boy band plays on the radio in the living room. Maddie dances around, wearing her Sunday best—meaning she’s dressed like some sort of rambunctious little superhero, with a tutu and rainbow-striped tights, a too-big black Breezeo t-shirt, complete with a fuzzy purple blanket flung around her like a cape. She’s all over the place, a ball of energy this morning, while I’m… well… I’m a mess.
My eyes burn. I didn’t get much sleep, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, conjuring up hypothetical conversations, playing out years worth of what if’s. This morning, my hands are shaking as I busy myself cleaning, trying to distract myself from reality, but it isn’t working. No matter how much I sweep and mop and scrub, I keep thinking about how big of a disaster this could become.
The song on the radio changes… a girl band this time… as a soft knock sounds from the apartment door.
“I got it!” Maddie shouts, heading for the door as I tense, in the middle of wiping down the kitchen counters for the third time.
“No, wait, hold on a second,” I say, but she isn’t paying me any attention. The clock on the wall reads 12:01. I told him to come by anytime in the afternoon, and it’s after noon now, which means…
“Breezeo!” she announces, flinging the door open, excitedly spinning around to look for me. “Mommy, look, it’s—”
“Jonathan,” I say, stepping out of the kitchen, nervously rubbing my palms on the thighs of my jeans.
“Jonathan,” she repeats, standing in the doorway in front of him.
He stares down at her, smiling. “Maddie.”
“Come in!” Maddie says, grabbing his arm—the injured one—to tug him into the apartment. He grimaces, not resisting, but his smile wavers when his eyes meet mine.
Sighing, I close the door behind them, my back pressing against it. Maddie’s rambling away—about what, I don’t know. I feel like I’m slipping underwater, my heart feverishly racing, but Jonathan seems to understand. He’s smiling at her again, listening, as she seems to give him a quick tour of the apartment.
He pauses near the small hallway that leads to the bedrooms, his gaze meeting mine again. I know what he’s thinking. I’m not sure how, or even why, but the moment our eyes connect, it’s like being shoved back in time—to another place, a different apartment, one somehow even smaller, but it was our home for a while.
“We can go play in my room!” Maddie says, trying to pull him that direction.
“Oh, whoa, whoa,” I say, coming out of my stupor as I shove away from the door. He comes around and stranger danger seriously goes right out the window. I know he’s her father and all, but she doesn’t know that. Not yet. “Slow your roll for a second, little girl. We need to have a conversation.”
Her eyes widen. I glance between her and Jonathan, their expressions nearly identical. Worried.
“I didn’t do nothing,” Maddie says, shaking her head.
“I know,” I say, pointing to the couch. “Sit.”
She sits, finally letting go of Jonathan. He carefully sits down on the edge of the couch beside her. I linger a moment before perching myself on the coffee table in front of her.
“I, uh…” I have no idea how to even begin. “I mean, we…”
“Maybe I should…” Jonathan starts, pausing before saying, “You know.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I got it.”
“Got what, Mommy?” Maddie asks.
“We wanted to talk to you about something,” I tell her. “About why Jonathan is here.”
“To play with me?” she asks.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Well, I mean, maybe, but that’s not really it. You see, I’ve known him for a long time, since before you came into my life, sweetheart.”
“Oh.” She stares at me. “So he’s gonna play with you, then?”
“What? No.” I scoff, making a face. Ugh, I can feel my cheeks heating. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just… look, you know your friend Jenny that lived beside Grandpa? You remember how she went away, and I explained that her parents decided not to live together anymore, because some parents don’t live together, so she had to go stay at a different house?”
Her eyes widen again. “Do I have to go away?”
“What? No! You don’t have to go anywhere.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. It’s not like that. I’m just saying, you know, sometimes parents don’t live together, and that’s okay, and it doesn’t make them any less of a family. Everyone has a mom and a dad.”
She shakes her head. “Not everyone.”
“Yes, sweetheart. Everyone.”
“Nuh-uh, Noah at my school doesn’t got a dad. He’s got two moms!”
“Oh, well… okay, but still, that’s what I mean. Everyone has two parents.”
“But Jenny doesn’t got two now. She’s got three, ‘cuz her dad got married, so she has another different kinda mommy, right?”
“Right.” Man, I’m screwing this all up. “But she still has her dad, too, so what I’m saying is—”
“I’m your dad.”
Jonathan’s voice is quiet as he cuts in, but it still packs enough of a punch to make me inhale sharply.
Maddie looks at him. “You wanna be my dad?”
“I do,” he says. “I already am.”
Her mouth falls open in shock. “Did you get married to Mommy?”
He blinks rapidly, caught off guard, while I choke on thin air, coughing at that question.
“Oh, no, we didn’t…” His eyes cut my way before he continues. “It’s not like that. I’ve always been your dad.”
“How?”
“How?” he repeats. “Well, I just am. Your mother, she’s your mom, and I’m your dad.”
“But how?” she asks again.
He looks to me for help, like he’s not sure what she’s even asking, so I chime in again before he takes that how literal and starts spilling about the birds and the bees.
“Moms and Dads aren’t always together, remember? So he’s still your dad even if he wasn’t around.”
“But where was he at?”
She’s asking me, not him. I know it’s because she trusts me implicitly, and as much as she adores what she believes he is, she doesn’t yet know Jonathan. But I don’t know how to answer that, or if I even should. I don’t know if I should be the one to explain his absence, to make his excuses.
“I wasn’t where I should’ve been,” he chimes in. “I should’ve been with you, but I was…”
“Sick,” I say when he struggles for words.
“Sick,” he says.
“Did you have the tummy bug?” she asks, looking at him.
“No, it was worse than that,” he admits, “and I’m to blame, nobody else. I made some really bad choices. I—”
“Did you disappear?” she asks.
“I messed up,” he says. “I know I haven’t been here for you, but I want to be here now, if you’ll let me.”
She sits in silence for a moment, thinking that over, before shrugging. “Okay.”
He looks stunned. “Okay?”
“Okay,” she says again, standing up from the couch as she grabs his hand to pull him along with her again. “But you have to sleep in Mommy’s bed, ‘cuz mine can’t fit you.”
“Uh…” He laughs awkwardly as he follows her. “What?”
“He’s not going to live with us,” I say. “Remember Jenny’s parents?”
She nods, looking at me. “But can he play now, Mommy? Please?”
“Of course,” I say, giving her a smile. “He can stay and play as long as he wants.”
She drags him away before I say anything else.
I faintly hear her rambling about something from her bedroom as I try to busy myself again to keep from fixating on his presence. I clean some more. I listen to music. I watch a bit of television.