Emma’s forging ahead with her pretzel in one fist, camera in the other, her steps a haphazard skip that dodges cracks like it’s a game. The sun’s dipping now, painting the park in that fleeting November gold, turning bare branches into glowing silhouettes and softening the edges of the city.
From here, the skyline unfurls like a postcard—Manhattan’s jagged teeth biting into the sky. The Twin Towers loom over it all like silent sentinels. From this distance, they look like they were sketched onto the sky with a ruler and an ink pen, so tall they seem to be holding up the atmosphere itself.
I haven’t dwelled on them in ages, but the sight tugs something loose inside me, a thread of memory unraveling.Mom and Dad used to haul me and Maria up to Windows on the World for birthdays as kids—a ritual extravagance, us scrubbed and starched, the elevator whooshing us to the 107th floor like a rocket. The food was fancy gibberish—escargot? Foie gras?—but it was the view that stuck: the city sprawled out like a living map, the rivers snaking through it, bridges threading it together. My dad would point out the Greek neighborhoods, his voice thick with pride, while Maria dared me to press my nose to the glass and look straight down. I’d chicken out every time, convinced the whole thing would tilt and spill us into the void.
Since the disaster with Rebecca, I’ve stayed in my own small radius. I stopped going to the places that felt like “big life” moments, sticking to the safe, manageable corners of the city. But staring at those towers now, that old ache stirs—not pain, exactly, but a quiet longing for the kid I was, wide-eyed and convinced the world was an endless adventure waiting to unfold.
By the time we shuffle through the door of my apartment, Emma’s a dead weight against my shoulder, her head bobbing with each step, mouth slack and a thin trail of drool soaking into my shirt. She’s out cold, one arm flopped loose like a rag doll’s, the other still gripping her camera as if she conked out mid-snap. The day’s caught up to her—the zoo, the ducks, the pretzel sugar crash—all of it hitting like a freight train.
“I can tuck her in,” Annie murmurs, her voice pitched low to match the dim hallway light, as I juggle keys and her limp form.
“You sure?” I ask, already feeling the ache in my back from hauling her the last few blocks.
“Positive.” She reaches out, and I transfer Emma carefully. Emma barely stirs—just a soft, snuffly sigh before she nuzzles into Annie’s neck, her small hand curling into the fabric of Annie’s sweater as if it’s the most natural spot in the world. I watch them disappear down the hallway—Annie’s steady stride,the way she supports Emma’s weight without thinking—and I feel that familiar ache of longing.
It’s the phantom limb of a partnership. That sudden realization of what it feels like to have someone else hold the other end of the rope. It’s not just the physical labor, but it’s the mental shift. The quiet relief of hearingI’ve got herand actually being able to let go.
Guilt nips at the heels of that, though. Emma’s mine—my mess, my miracle, my everything. I’m supposed to be the one-man army. But the truth is, I’m not built that way. No one is. When she reaches for Annie first sometimes, or lights up at her stories more than mine, that rush of relief hits like a drug, and yeah, it makes me feel guilty for thinking that way sometimes. But maybe it’s not terrible to need help. Maybe it’s just human.
I peel off my coat and hang it by the door. The apartment feels too still, the silence amplified by the taunting blink of the answering machine on the kitchen counter. There’s one message. I’d left my pager on my desk this morning because I forgot to clip it to my belt in the rush of getting out the door. It’s probably David Huang from the lab, asking about the grant proposal that’s due next week. He’s been on my case about it for days.
I jab the play button, leaning against the counter as the tape whirs.
“Leo, hi. It’s…it’s me. Rebecca.”
The air leaves the room. It’s a physical sensation—a vacuum-seal around my chest. My heart doesn’t just skip; it stalls, like a car engine dying in the middle of an intersection.
“I know—it’s been a while. Months. And I—god, I’m so sorry. For everything. Leaving. Not calling. All of it. I can’t…I can’t unpack it all over a tape, but I want to talk. Face-to-face. About Emma and maybe figuring out some kind of…arrangement moving forward. Maybe let’s meet Friday? I’ll be in town, and wecan go to that café we always liked—Grounded, on Amsterdam and 83rd? Ten o’clock? I’ll be there if you…if you decide to come. Okay. Um. Bye.”
The world tilts. My pulse stutters, a cold jolt racing down my spine, freezing me in place like I’ve been plugged into a socket.
Eight months. Two hundred and forty-odd days of radio silence. Eight months of me learning how to braid hair via trial and error, of watching Emma’s face fall every time the doorbell rang and it wasn’t her mother. Eight months of nanny roulette, of nights where I stared at the ceiling wondering if I’d ever get it right. Eight months of scrambling through the wreckage she left behind.
I should be raging—punching a wall, cursing her name. But it’s dread that coils low in my stomach because this upends the fragile balance we’ve scraped together. It drags the past kicking and screaming into the now, threatening to crack open wounds I thought were scabbing over.
The door to Emma’s room clicks shut. Annie appears, making her way back to the kitchen, her hair a bit mussed from the transfer. She’s wearing a soft, weary smile—the one that usually makes me feel like I’ve finally come home. “She didn’t even wake up when I pulled off her boots. Solid knockout.”
I can’t move. I can’t find a smile to give her back.
Her expression falters, her head tilting. “Leo? What is it? What happened?”
I look at her—at this woman who has become the marrow in my bones over the last few weeks—and for the first time, I’m terrified of what the truth will do to the floor beneath our feet.
I rake a hand through my hair, the strands still gritty from the park wind, and jab the play button again, needing to hear it one more time, like maybe it’ll make more sense on repeat.
The machine whirs, static popping before her voice spills out. “Leo, hi. It’s…it’s me. Rebecca.”
Beside me, I hear the hitching intake of Annie’s breath. Her hand flies to her mouth, her eyes going wide.
Hearing Rebecca after all these months—it’s not the sucker punch I braced for. It’s subtler, more disorienting, like stumbling across an old photo album in the back of a closet. That familiar lilt, the way her sentences trail up at the edges like questions, how she says my name with this casual ownership that grates now.
The message ends with a final, clinical beep. The silence that follows is heavy enough to crush us.
“Leo,” Annie whispers, her voice barely a thread.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” I ask. My voice sounds like it’s been dragged over gravel. “What thehellam I supposed to do with this?”
“I don’t know.”
