Chapter 3: Her Name Was Diane
She said it quietly enough that only I could hear.
"What's her name?"
I didn't answer right away.
The manager was still standing there.
A few guests nearby had stopped pretending not to watch.
Mia was looking up at me with that careful expression she'd learned somewhere in the last eight months — the one that meant she was waiting to see if she needed to be scared.
"Why?" I said.
The woman — her boyfriend had called her Renee, I'd caught that much — took one step closer.
Her sunglasses were still pushed up into her hair.
Without them framing her face, she looked older than I'd first thought.
And something in her eyes had shifted completely from what it had been twenty minutes ago.
"Please," she said.
"I'm not — I just need to know her name."
"Mia," I said, because something in her voice stopped me from lying.
Renee's hand went to her mouth.
Her boyfriend was beside her now.
"Renee.
What's going on?"
She didn't look at him.
She was looking at Mia the way you look at something you thought you'd lost.
"I have a daughter," she said.
Her voice had gone thin.
"Had.
She — her name was Mia too."
The pool deck had gone very quiet.
I pulled Mia slightly behind me.
Not roughly.
Just enough.
"I'm sorry for your loss," I said carefully.
"But that doesn't explain what you did."
"I know." She pressed her fingers against her lips for a moment.
"I know it doesn't.
I don't have an explanation that makes it okay.
I just — when I saw her, I didn't see her.
I saw —" She stopped.
Looked down at the tile.
"I've been doing that a lot lately.
Not seeing what's actually in front of me."
Her boyfriend put a hand on her shoulder.
She shook it off.
"How long?" I asked.
I don't know why I asked.
Maybe because Mia was still holding her smoothie and watching this woman with open curiosity instead of fear, the way only children can watch someone falling apart.
"Eight months," Renee said.
"Leukemia."
My throat closed.
Mia had been diagnosed nine months ago.
I didn't say that.
I wasn't ready to say that.
The manager cleared his throat gently.
"Ma'am, I still need to ask you to —"
"I'll move," Renee said.
She wasn't looking at him.
She was looking at Mia again, but differently now.
Not the way she had before.
"I'll move.
I'm sorry." She bent slightly, bringing herself closer to Mia's level.
"I'm sorry I was unkind to you.
That was wrong of me."
Mia considered this with the gravity of someone twice her age.
"It's okay," Mia said.
"Sometimes people are mean when they're sad."
Renee straightened up.
Her eyes were wet.
Her boyfriend took her arm and she let him this time.
They gathered their things without another word and moved to chairs on the far side of the pool.
The manager turned to me.
"I apologize for what happened, ma'am.
Your original chairs are available again.
And I'd like to offer your family complimentary lunch today — poolside, whenever you're ready."
I nodded.
I couldn't quite speak.
Mia tugged my hand.
"Can we go back to the good chairs now?"
"Yeah, baby," I said.
"We can go back to the good chairs."
We walked back across the deck.
I kept my eyes forward.
May you like
But I felt Renee watching us the whole way.
And I didn't know yet what that meant — or what she was about to do next.
