“I don’t know.”
Her eyes flash. “God, can’t you ever stoplying?”
“I’m not lying.”
“Oh, okay. So he’s here to sayHi, daughter, nice to meet you,and then he’s going to leave and go back to Egypt and you’re going to stay here and we all pretend nothing’s changed?”
I don’t know how to respond, because there’s no good answer.
“Yeah,” Meret mutters. “I thought so.”
There’s a moment when, as an adult, you realize that the child you are speaking to is no longer a child. With Kieran, it happened when I had to tell him that our mother was dead. I remember looking into his eyes and seeing a shift in him, a realization that the solid foundation he’d been leaning against had turned to dust and he was falling. For Meret, it’s now. When she was a little girl, I’d told her all the fairy tales about love: how it could wake you from death, how it could triumph over evil, how it could make the poor rich. But today, I am drawing back the curtain, revealing not just pretty stories but facts: that love can also kill you; that for you to triumph, other people have to be hurt; that the wealth love brings comes at a staggering cost. “I don’t know what will happen with your dad. We have a lot to work out. But I’m also not going to tell you that I don’t want to be with Wyatt. I love him in a way that I never thought I’d love someone.”
Truth vibrates when it’s drawn across the bow of pain; Meret hears that note, and listens intently. “Some people never get to feel that way, much less find someone else they love…and I did love your dad. I do. But the greatest love I’ve ever known isyou.” I reach for her hand, and she doesn’t pull away. “I lost Wyatt once, and I survived. I may lose your dad, and I will survive. But you?” In her face, I see my eyes, Wyatt’s jaw, strength from us both. “I wouldn’t survive losing you.”
With a sob, Meret throws herself against me again. I hold her close and stroke her hair, the way I used to when she was tiny and monsters took up residence in her room. They may not have been real, but her fear was, and that was all that mattered. “What if he doesn’t like me?” she asks, and I realize she has made a decision.
I frame her face in my palms. “Baby,” I say. “How couldn’t he?”
—
ITEXTWYATT.But it doesn’t feel fair to ask him into the house, not with Brian there. So instead, Wyatt parks at the curb and waits on the front porch, sitting on a little wooden swing we bought five years ago that we thought we would use more than we ever did. When I open the door, Meret a step behind me, he stands.
And lights up like a candle.
“Hello,” Wyatt says.
She shifts from one foot to the other. “Hi.”
“Would you, um. Would you care to sit down?”
She doesn’t move, so I put my hand on the small of her back and give her a little push. They sit down together on the swing, boxers in opposite corners, sizing each other up.
“Well,” I start. “I’ll just give you two a minute—”
“No,” Meret interrupts, just as Wyatt says, “Please, stay.”
So I lean against the sturdy bones of the house, trying to blend into the shingles.
Wyatt clasps his hands between his knees. Meret folds her arms.
“I hear you’re a scientist.”
“You don’t have to patronize me,” she replies.
“I wasn’t. I just…” He rubs the back of his neck. It is the first time I have ever seen Wyatt in a situation where he isn’t effortlessly comfortable. “Your mother told me a little bit about the camp you went to this summer.”
“I can catch you up on the rest. I’ve always wanted a Bernese mountain dog, I know every word ofHamiltonby heart, and I’m terrified to eat fish with bones in it. I can’t cook but I can make nutrient agar. Oh,” she says, too sweetly. “And I’m a Taurus.”
He bursts out laughing. “Well. I can certainly see the resemblance.”
“There’s a DNA test for that, if you want proof.”
To Wyatt’s credit, he doesn’t look to me for help. “I don’t need to see the results.” He keeps his gaze solely on Meret, who isn’t giving an inch. “Look, you should know that…I’m glad. I don’t know how, but I’d like to try to be your father.”
I flinch, because I know that’s exactly what Meret did not want to hear.
“Thanks, but I have one of those,” she says. “You’re just genetic material.”
