You Are the Waves, You Are the Wind novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Lullaby

Her mother's last recording says the sign-off was a family lullaby, never a brand; then Garner's weepy video goes up with Poppy's crying face in it.

I waited until Poppy was asleep on the couch under my mother's quilt.

Then I sat on the kitchen floor with my back against the cabinets and pressed play.

There was a long wet cough first.

Then my mother's voice, thinner than I remembered, but still hers.

"Sadie Jean. If you're hearing this, Elliot finally found you, and I'm too tired to be mad that it took him so long."

I laughed, and it came out as a sob.

"I don't have much breath, so I'll say the main thing first. That song is mine."

I knew which song she meant.

"You are the waves, you are the wind. I sang it to you in the boat when you had the croup. My mother sang it to me. It was never anybody's catchphrase, and it is not for sale."

She stopped to breathe.

"I watched your videos on the library computer. You said it every time, you and that nice tall boy, Garner. I cried every time, and I wasn't sure why until last week."

"Why?" I whispered to the recorder.

"Because he said it to the camera, baby. You said it to him."

The tape hissed.

"Come home when you can stand to. The porch needs paint. I love you more than the whole ocean. That's all."

The recorder clicked off.

I sat there until my legs went numb.

I did not cry the way I thought I would.

I cried quietly, and for a long time.

At some point, I got up, carried Poppy to my old bed, and sang it to her low.

"You are the waves, you are the wind."

She sighed in her sleep and said, "Lamb is cold."

I tucked the lamb under her chin.

In the morning, there was a smell of bacon coming through the window.

I found Elliot in my mother's kitchen with a skillet and a dish towel over his shoulder.

He had let himself in again.

"I knocked," he said before I could speak. "Twice. You were out."

"You have a key."

"I have your mother's key. I'll hand it over if you want it back."

I looked at his forearms.

He had the sleeves of his shirt pushed up, and the skin there was tanned and scarred, and he was scraping eggs with great concentration.

I looked away from his forearms and out the window.

"Where's the lamb's breakfast?" Poppy asked from the hall, hair flattened on one side.

"Lamb eats toast," Elliot said, without turning around.

"How do you know?"

"I've met a lot of lambs."

Poppy climbed onto a chair and accepted this as a normal fact about the world.

I sat down across from her and let him put a plate in front of me.

"Did you listen to it?" he asked quietly.

"Yes."

"Okay."

He didn't ask what was on it.

I was more grateful for that than I wanted to be.

After breakfast, Poppy dragged him by two fingers down to the dock.

I stood on the porch with my coffee and watched the two of them crouch over a bucket.

He held a crab up by its back so she could see.

She shrieked and then immediately asked to hold it.

"No," he said.

"Why?"

"It's a crab, and you're five."

"I'm almost six."

"Then you can pet it with one finger when you're six."

I realized I was smiling.

I stopped.

It had been a long time since my daughter had been on a dock without somebody pointing a lens at her.

I took my phone out of my pocket to see if Garner had texted that the photos were coming down.

Forty-one notifications.

I opened the top one.

It was a new post on our account, forty minutes old.

Garner, in our old living room, with red eyes, looking straight into the camera.

The title read: Sadie Quit On Us.

"I'm sorry to tell you all," Garner said, and his voice broke in the right place, "that the woman you trusted walked away from this family. And from you."

The camera moved.

It was a quick cutaway, just a flash, stitched in like a reaction shot.

Poppy, in her yellow boots, on our front steps, crying.

It was her face.

It was the day before the hearing, and she was crying because I had told her we might have to leave the house.

Under the video, a counter was already climbing past two million views.

"Elliot," I said, and he looked up from the dock.

I held out the phone.

My hand was shaking so hard the screen blurred.

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