Chapter 8: After the Lunch
We did not hug in the restaurant.
We paid the bill — my father insisted, and none of us had the energy to argue — and we walked out onto the street, and we stood for a moment in the ordinary afternoon light, the four of us, not quite knowing what shape to arrange ourselves into.
My mother looked at me.
"Can I see her?" she asked.
"June.
Can I meet her?"
I had been expecting this question.
I had thought about it the night before, turning it over, trying to find the right answer.
"Not yet," I said.
Her face moved.
"I need some time," I said.
"That's not a punishment.
It's just true."
She nodded.
Her eyes were still bright.
"Okay," she said.
My father touched my shoulder briefly.
Not a hug.
Just a hand.
Then he guided my mother toward the car.
Whitney and I stood on the pavement and watched them go.
"How do you feel?" Whitney asked.
"Strange.
Like something I've been carrying for a long time just got lighter but my arms still remember the weight."
Whitney was quiet for a moment.
"She's going to try to manage this too," she said.
"The recovery.
She'll want to set the pace.
She'll want to decide when things are repaired."
"I know."
"We have to not let her."
"I know."
Whitney looked at me.
She had her mother's eyes, which I had always known but had never let myself sit with for very long, because looking at Whitney had always felt like looking at evidence of something I couldn't name.
"I'm sorry I missed your promotion dinner," she said.
"I'm sorry I missed your thirtieth."
"We have time," she said.
"To do the ones we missed."
"We do."
She reached over and squeezed my good arm.
Brief and firm.
Then she said: "I want to meet June."
"Come Sunday," I said.
"I'll make lunch."
"I'll bring wine."
"Bring the good kind."
She smiled.
It was a real one.
I recognized it because it was the same smile I had seen in photographs from when we were small, before the managing had started, before we had each been handed a version of the other that wasn't true.
We went our separate ways.
I took a car home.
June was with Dara — she had offered to watch her for the afternoon, and I had said yes without practicing the refusal first, which was new.
When I got home, Dara was on the floor with June on a blanket between them, holding a soft toy above her head and narrating its movements in a low, serious voice.
"And now the elephant goes left," Dara was saying.
"Very dramatic.
The crowd is stunned."
June was watching the elephant with the focused intensity she brought to everything.
"How did it go?" Dara asked without looking up.
I sat down on the floor beside them.
"She admitted it," I said.
"All of it."
"And?"
"And I don't know yet.
It's going to take time."
"That's honest."
"I'm trying to be."
June's eyes drifted from the elephant to my face.
She looked at me the way she always did — with that complete, unguarded attention that newborns have before they learn to be careful.
I reached out and let her wrap her fingers around mine.
"Whitney's coming Sunday," I said.
"Good."
"She wants to meet June."
Dara set the elephant down and looked at me.
"How does that feel?"
I thought about it.
"Like something starting," I said.
"Instead of something ending."
Dara nodded.
She picked the elephant back up.
"And now," she said to June, in the same low, serious voice, "the elephant goes right."
June's fingers tightened around mine.
May you like
I stayed on the floor.
I didn't need to be anywhere else.
