The baby began to look restless, as if she wouldn’t mind climbing down off her mother’s lap to go explore some of the machinery in the room. She made an impatient whine.
“Almost there, baby girl,” Sophie said.
“Here we go, I’m turning it on,” the woman at the terminal said. “Talk to her, Mom.”
“Can you hear me?” the young woman asked her child. The mother could not have been more than twenty.
The baby didn’t react to her question. She watched Sophie, waiting for her to turn another page in the book.
“Keep talking,” the technician suggested. “I’m going to adjust the volume.”
“Hi, baby,” the mother said as her daughter continued to look the other way. “Can you hear Mama’s voice? Hi, Samantha. How is Samantha today?”
Suddenly, the toddler’s whole body jerked with surprise. Her eyes popped wide and her mouth fell open. She made a breathy little gasp and turned her chin toward her mother.
“Hi, Samantha,” her mother said, voice shaking now. “Can you hear me, baby girl?”
Samantha gave a loud squeal. She raised both chubby arms in the air and shook them.
“Do you hear your name?” Tears leaked from the mother’s eyes.
Samantha squealed again. She lifted one stubby hand up to her mother’s mouth and patted her lips.
Her mother laughed and cried at the same time. “She can! She can hear me. Finally.”
The little girl gave another little shriek, still touching her mom’s mouth.
“You want me to sing?” Her mother smiled through her tears. She took a shaky breath and then sang the first line of an old song. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word. Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird…” But then she burst into tears. The toddler began to look worried. Her little chin quivered.
Sophie to the rescue.
My girl scooted her chair closer and took the little girl’s hand in hers, getting the baby’s attention. Then she sang the next line of the song. “If that mockingbird don’t sing, mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.”
It was the first time I’d heard Sophie sing in more than three years. Her perfect voice rose up, clear and shimmering. The baby turned to Sophie with wide-open eyes, her round face rapturous.
“And if that diamond ring don’t shine…”
Something wet dripped off my jaw and splashed onto my hand. Startled, I wiped my eyes with both hands. On the other side of the glass, Sophie continued to sing, her gorgeous voice cutting through every one of my defenses. The first time I ever heard her sing we were really just kids. Right away I’d wanted to be a man for her—to take good care of all that beauty.
I’d just had no clue how.
Her sweet voice went on, wrecking me all over again. “…you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.”
Fuck. I shoved my fist against my mouth as Sophie began a new song. “You are my sunshine,” she sang.
On the other side of the glass, the young mother wiped her eyes with a succession of tissues, and even the technician looked pretty misty as she made adjustments to her equipment and took notes.
The tears rained down my face and I gave up trying to stop them. It had been a long time since I let myself feel hopeful. That’s what Sophie had done to me today—forced my cranky self to be optimistic. She walked into this building every day and helped people find their own miracles.
She’d been trying to help me find mine, too. Like a jackass, I hadn’t let her.
Shit.
Bracing my head in my hands, I just let it out. I don’t know if it was one minute or ten minutes later when the door clicked open, and Sophie sat down on the chair beside me. I pressed my fingertips to my tear ducts and tried to breathe deeply.
“You paid for that,” she whispered.
“But you made it happen. You kill me, baby. Every day.”
She took my hand in hers and held it. “But it’s the same for me. What if we stopped trying to worry so much about who was responsible for every little thing that happens? Otherwise we’ll miss all the good stuff.” She nudged me to look through the two-way glass again where the young mother was holding her little girl, telling her how much she loved her.
Maybe Sophie was right.
“I’m sorry,” I gasped.
“Why?”
“I didn’t think I deserved you. Fuck, I still don’t. But maybe it isn’t about that.”
My words didn’t make a whole lot of sense out of context, but Sophie and I had always been on the same page. “It isn’t about that,” she agreed, laying a hand on my back and rubbing. “Maybe you also didn’t deserve a pack of shitty friends who told you it was a good idea to snort your first pill.”
Not a bad point, really.
“I mean it, Jude. Enough worrying about what we deserve. Let’s appreciate what we have.”
I sat up and pulled Sophie against my chest. I buried my wet face in her hair and wrapped my arms around her. “The only thing I have ever been afraid of is losing you.”