Chapter 6: The Things a Child Carries
The surgery was scheduled for a Thursday.
I had made the call to Columbia Presbyterian the morning after the warehouse.
The specialist — a Dr.
Yuen, who had a reputation that extended well beyond New York — had reviewed Sofia's file and confirmed what the previous doctors had said.
The valve defect was correctable.
The window was narrow.
The procedure needed to happen before her seventh birthday, which was eleven weeks away.
Elena had not thanked me when I told her.
She had sat across from me at the small kitchen table in her sister Rosa's apartment in Astoria and listened to everything I said, and when I finished she looked at the table for a moment and then said, "When can we meet with him?"
That was all.
I understood it.
Gratitude felt like debt, and Elena had spent six years making sure she didn't owe anyone anything.
We met with Dr.
Yuen on a Wednesday.
Sofia sat between us in the consultation room, wearing a yellow cardigan that was slightly too large for her, her feet not quite reaching the floor.
She listened to everything the doctor said with the same focused attention she'd given her shoelaces in the hallway.
When Dr.
Yuen finished explaining the procedure, Sofia looked at him and said, "Will it hurt?"
"You'll be asleep," he said.
"You won't feel anything."
"What about after?"
"After, yes.
Some.
But we'll give you medicine for that."
Sofia nodded, processing this.
Then she looked at me.
"Will you be there?" she asked.
"After?"
The question caught me somewhere I wasn't prepared for.
Elena was very still beside me.
"If your mother says it's all right," I said.
Sofia turned to Elena.
"Can he?"
Elena looked at me over Sofia's head.
Her expression was careful.
Unresolved.
The look of someone standing at a door they haven't decided whether to open.
"We'll see," she said.
Sofia accepted this and turned back to Dr.
Yuen.
"Okay," she said.
"I'm ready."
She was six years old.
She had been ready for things her whole life that no six-year-old should have to be ready for.
In the elevator afterward, Sofia slipped her hand into mine.
I don't think she thought about it.
It seemed automatic, the way children reach for the nearest adult hand when the ground feels uncertain.
But I felt it go through me like something breaking open.
Elena saw it.
She looked away.
Outside on the sidewalk, Sofia spotted a pretzel cart on the corner and looked up at her mother with the first purely childlike expression I had seen from her — hopeful, a little shy about the hoping.
"Can I?"
"Ask him," Elena said quietly.
"He's buying."
Sofia looked at me.
"Whatever you want," I said.
She got a pretzel with mustard and ate it sitting on a bench while Elena and I stood a few feet apart, not quite talking, not quite not talking.
"She asked if you'd be there," Elena said finally.
"She doesn't do that with people she's just met."
"I noticed."
"She's a good judge." A pause.
"She gets that from me."
I almost smiled.
"I know."
Elena looked at Sofia on the bench, mustard on her chin, watching pigeons with the same serious attention she gave everything.
"I'm not ready to forgive you," Elena said.
"I want you to know that.
Not yet.
Maybe not for a long time."
"I understand."
"But Sofia—" She stopped.
Started again.
"Sofia deserves to know who her father is.
She deserves to have one, if he's going to be worth having." She looked at me.
"Are you going to be worth having?"
I thought about the warehouse.
About Marco's face when he understood that the options were gone.
About the six years I hadn't known to look for her, and the six years I had lost regardless.
"I'm going to try," I said.
Elena looked at me for a long moment.
Then she called Sofia's name, and Sofia jumped off the bench and ran toward us, pretzel still in hand, pigeons scattering behind her.
That night, back at Rosa's apartment, I sat in my car outside for twenty minutes before driving away.
My phone buzzed.
A message from Dante.
*Caruso's lawyer made contact.
He wants a meeting.*
I looked at the message.
May you like
Then I looked up at the window on the third floor where a light was still on.
Caruso could wait until morning.
