“I don’t know, Em.”
“Why did she go?”
This is the question she asks every few days, and I still don’t have a good answer. The truth—that her mother left us for someone else, that she’s somewhere in Boston with a man she was sleeping with while we were still engaged—is not appropriate for a four-year-old. But I don’t know what else to say.
“Sometimes adults make choices that are hard to understand,” I say carefully. “But it’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Then why doesn’t she come back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think she misses me?”
The question splits my heart in half. “I know she does.”
I don’t actually know that, but the lie is a necessary shelter for now. I have no idea what Rebecca thinks or feels because she hasn’t called, hasn’t written, hasn’t reached out once since she left. But I can’t tell Emma that, either.
Emma’s face is still scrunched up, on the verge of tears, and I can see her trying to hold it together. She’s four. She shouldn’t have to hold anything together.
“Come here,” I say, opening my arms.
She hesitates for a second, and I think she might refuse, but then she scrambles across the floor and crashes into me. I wrap my arms around her, pulling her close, and she burrows her face into my shoulder. She smells like the strawberry shampoo we use for her hair and something sticky that’s probably the syrup from breakfast.
“I’m sorry I threw the plate,” she mumbles into my shirt.
“I know. But you can’t do that anymore, okay? Even when you’re angry.”
“Okay.”
“And you can’t tell people you hope they get eaten by sharks.”
“Even if I really think it?”
“Some things are better kept to ourselves, Em.”
She pulls back slightly and looks up at me. “Are you mad at me?”
“No, kiddo. I’m not mad.”
“Tracy was mad.”
“Tracy was in over her head, that’s all.”
She looks up at me then. “Are you going to get a new Tracy?”
“I have to. I have to work.”
“What if I don’t like them?”
“Then we’ll figure it out together. But you have to give people a chance, Em.”
She rests her head back on my shoulder, and we sit there for a minute in silence. I can feel her breathing start to even out, the tension leaving her small body. This is the part that kills me—the moments when she’s soft and vulnerable and just needs her dad to hold her. Because I know as soon as I let go, as soon as I have to tell her I need to leave for work or she needs to eat her vegetables or it’s time for bed, the walls will go back up and she’ll be angry again.
“Dad?” she says quietly.
“Yeah?”
“Can we get pizza for dinner?”
