“Why was she sad?” Lily asks.
“Good Lord—sounds like an episode ofMaury Povichjust happened in here,” the aide whispers to the therapist.
I urge Lily through the door and quickly follow her out.
“Why was she sad?” Lily repeats in the hallway.
I’m relieved to hear the door close behind me.
“It’s all grown-up stuff,” Quinn says.
Lily wrinkles her nose. “Grown-up stuff seems awful.”
Yeah, kiddo—a lot of it is.
Quinn pauses to leave the rest of the cake at the nurses’ station and to thank them for their care of Margaret. We head to the elevator, and ride down to the lobby with Sarah, Annie, and two strangers.
We manage to make it down to the lobby before Lily speaks again. “Maybe Daddy an’ the sad lady can both move in with us.”
“Honey, they have their own home,” Quinn says as we walk into the atrium, “and they’re moving far away in a few weeks.”
“What?” Lily sounds stricken. “Daddy’s moving away?”
Quinn gestures to a grouping of chairs. “Maybe we should sit for a minute so we’re not blocking people.”
I nod. We sit down in side-by-side chairs, and Quinn gathers Lily on her lap. Sarah and Annie move to the other side of the lobby, but don’t leave.
“How far away is he moving?” Lily asks.
“A long, long way,” Quinn answers.
“As far as Grams’s house?”
“A whole lot further.”
Lily turns to me, her eyes distressed. “Why do you have to move? I want you to be like Alicia’s daddy.”
“Honey, Zack was a donor.” Quinn rubs Lily’s arm. “He was never supposed to be a real father. Your mommy explained it to you, remember? Your donor is a nice man who made it possible for you to be born, but he’s not a part of your life like a real father.”
“But why not? He’s here, an’ he likes me, an’ he says I can call him Daddy.”
“That’s just a name; it isn’t what he’ll really be, not in the day-to-day sense.”
Quinn gives me a look. If expressions could talk—and hers most certainly does—this one is saying,Listen up, buddy, and listen good.
“If Zack wants to, he can write you letters and you can draw him pictures and send them to him,” Quinn says. “But he’ll have his own life, and his own family.”
Lily twists toward me. “Why can’t I be your family, too?”
I want to tell her that she is. Quinn must sense it, because she puts a staying hand on my arm and shoots me a warning glare.
“Because your mommy never met him, and he signed a contract saying he was just a donor.” Quinn’s voice is firm, her tone final. “You weren’t supposed to meet him or even know his name until you’re all grown up. The fact that you’ve met him now is lagniappe.”
“What’s lagniappe?”
“It’s a bonus—something extra that you didn’t expect to happen.”
“Like when Mommy died?”
