Chapter 5: What I Told Mia When She Woke Up
I was still sitting in the chair by the window when Mia woke up.
She blinked at me from the pillow, hair — the soft new fuzz that had started coming back in the last two weeks, darker than before — pressed flat on one side.
"Were you watching me sleep?" she asked.
"A little bit."
"That's weird, Mom."
"Probably."
She sat up slowly, the way she still did, checking in with her body before committing to being vertical.
Then she reached for the water bottle on the nightstand and drank half of it.
"Is something wrong?" she asked.
"No," I said.
And then, because she was eight and had spent most of the last year being told things in careful, managed pieces, I said, "Actually — something happened.
Something I want to tell you about."
She pulled her knees to her chest and waited.
I told her about the envelope.
I didn't tell her about the trial yet — I hadn't processed that myself, hadn't made a single call, hadn't done anything except fold the paper and put it in my own bag with hands that still weren't entirely steady.
But I told her about Renee's note.
About the other Mia.
About the purple.
Mia listened without interrupting, which was unusual for her.
When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.
"She lost her little girl," Mia said.
"Yes."
"And then she was mean to me."
"Yes."
Another pause.
"And then she felt bad."
"Very bad, I think."
Mia picked at a loose thread on the duvet.
"Do you think she cries at night?"
The question landed somewhere behind my sternum.
"I think she probably does," I said.
Mia nodded slowly, like this confirmed something she'd already suspected.
"I think we should get her something from the gift shop.
Like a card or something."
"Mia —"
"Not because she deserves it," Mia said, with the particular precision of an eight-year-old who has thought this through.
"Just because she's sad.
Those are different things."
I looked at my daughter — her new fuzz hair, her hospital bracelet still on her wrist because she'd refused to take it off until she decided she was ready, her small serious face — and I didn't trust myself to speak for a moment.
"Okay," I said finally.
"We can do that."
"Can we go now?
I want to see if they have purple things."
We found the gift shop on the ground floor, near the lobby.
It was small — postcards, sunscreen, a rack of resort-branded hats.
But there was a small display of cards near the register, and one of them had a purple watercolor flower on the front, simple and clean.
Mia picked it up immediately.
"This one."
"What do you want to write in it?"
She thought about it while I paid.
Then, in the elevator back up, she held the card on her knee and borrowed my pen and wrote in her careful, still-slightly-uneven handwriting:
*I'm sorry about your Mia.
I think she was probably really great.
— Mia (the other one)*
I read it over her shoulder.
"Is that okay?" she asked.
"That's perfect," I said.
We left it at the front desk addressed to Renee's room number, which I'd seen on the envelope she'd sent.
The woman at the desk looked at the card, then at Mia, then back at the card, and said she'd make sure it was delivered.
We went back to the pool for the last hour of daylight.
I swam with Mia until the sun dropped behind the tree line and the water turned gold.
She laughed when I pretended to be a sea monster.
She splashed me so hard I had to wipe my eyes to see.
I held onto that hour with both hands.
May you like
Because upstairs in my bag was a folded piece of paper with a phone number on it.
And tomorrow morning, whether I was ready or not, I was going to have to decide what to do with it.
