The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Whale

I opened my mouth, and nothing came.

There are still holes in me since the snow.

I closed my eyes on the gallery steps.

Nantucket.

I could see the gray shingles and the rose hedge.

I couldn't see a whale.

"You don't know," Clara said. Her voice was very small.

"Wait."

"It's fine. It's actually fine. I knew you wouldn't remember."

"Clara. Give me a minute. Please."

She went quiet.

I made myself go slowly.

August. It was August, because the hedge was in bloom and I was angry about the heat.

I had a flight. London. Something with a bank.

There was a car coming for me at six.

At four in the afternoon, Clara came running up from the beach in a pink bathing suit.

She was screaming that there was a whale.

A young humpback, not even thirty feet, lying on its side in the shallows with the tide going out.

People with buckets. A woman from the rescue team in a wetsuit.

Its eye, open, the size of my fist, looking at my daughter.

And Clara holding my hand so hard her nails went in, asking me questions.

Is it a baby?

Yes.

Where's its mom?

I didn't know.

Is its mom coming?

The woman in the wetsuit had looked at me over Clara's head and shaken hers, very slightly.

And Clara had seen it.

Then she's all by herself, Clara had said, and started to cry.

I opened my eyes.

"I called the car and told it not to come," I said. "I took off my shoes. You were six and furious with the whole ocean."

Clara wasn't breathing.

"You asked me if her mother was coming. And I knelt down in the water in my good linen trousers, and I said, 'No, baby. So tonight we're her mother.'"

My daughter made a sound I'd never heard from her.

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