Daddy Forgot, but Mommy Remembers novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Midnight

On her first night Willa tucks Poppy in under a photo of another woman holding the newborn, and Christian says she looks like a song he cannot place; at dawn his fiancee steps out of a car and looks up at Willa's window.

The nursery was a bedroom now, painted a pale pink I would never have chosen.

My old crib was gone, and so was the bee mural I had painted with Christian holding the ladder.

Poppy sat on a white bed with her knees up, watching me turn down the blanket.

"Do you know any songs?" she asked.

"A few," I said. "Do you want a story first?"

"Mommy Giselle says stories are for babies."

My hand stopped on the pillow.

"Does she," I said.

"She says I'm five and I should sleep by myself."

Above the bed hung a framed photo of a woman in a hospital gown holding a newborn.

The woman was Giselle Harcourt, blond and glowing.

The baby in her arms was mine.

I knew the blanket, because my mother had knitted it.

I looked at the photo for a moment and then made myself look at Poppy.

"What if I stay until you're asleep?" I asked. "Just tonight."

"Okay," she said, like she was granting a favor.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

She lay down and watched me from under the quilt, with her hand wrapped around a small stuffed rabbit.

I didn't sing the lullaby.

I knew it would break something in me, and maybe something in her.

I hummed a different song, an old one my mother used to sing over the sink.

Poppy's eyelids got heavy, then heavier.

Right before she went under she said, "You smell like the soap in my dream."

Then she was asleep, and I sat in the dark with my hand over my mouth.

I stayed a long time.

Her breath was slow and wet, a little whistle in the nose, the same as when she was a baby.

I counted the freckles across her left cheek.

There were four, and the fourth one was new.

I thought, I have missed everything.

Then I thought, no, I have missed almost everything, and I'm here now.

Around midnight I stood up, and the floor creaked.

Christian was in the doorway.

He had loosened his tie and rolled his sleeves to the elbow, and I could see the bones of his wrists.

I knew those wrists.

I had held them above his head on a kitchen counter once, laughing.

"She's down?" he whispered.

"Out cold," I said.

"That's a first. She usually wakes me twice."

He stepped into the room and looked at his daughter.

His face did something I wasn't ready for.

It softened all at once.

"I don't know how to do this," he said, very quietly. "Giselle says I'm a good father."

He looked at his daughter again.

"I just keep feeling like I'm watching someone else's life."

I said nothing, because every true answer would have ended my job.

He glanced at me.

"You've been in this house six hours," he said. "She likes you already."

"I like her already."

"Is that professional?"

"No," I said. "It's just true."

He laughed under his breath.

It was the same laugh, low and surprised, the one he used to give me over the top of a wine glass.

My knees almost gave.

We walked out into the hall together and he pulled the door nearly shut.

The hall light was low and gold.

He stood too close.

"Can I ask you something strange?" he said.

"You're my boss. You can ask me anything."

"Have we met?"

My pulse beat in my ears.

"I'd remember," I said carefully.

"That's what I thought." He rubbed the scar through his eyebrow. "You look like a song I can't place."

I looked at the carpet.

"I get that a lot," I lied. "I have a common face."

"You don't."

He said it flatly.

His eyes dropped to my mouth and came back up fast.

"Sorry," he said. "I had a car accident a few years ago. Parts of me don't work right. Parts of my memory."

"I'm sorry."

"It's fine." It wasn't. "Goodnight, Ellie."

He said the false name easily, and it landed.

I went to the small bedroom at the end of the hall that they'd made up for me, and I did not sleep.

At 5:40 in the morning I stood at the window and watched the dark go gray over the driveway.

A black car turned in through the gate.

The driver's door opened and a woman in a cream coat stepped out.

Her blond hair was in the exact same sleek knot I remembered from the courtroom.

She tipped her sunglasses up and looked at the house.

Then she looked at my window.

For five long seconds she didn't move, and I didn't either.

Then she smiled, slowly, and lifted one gloved hand in a little wave.

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