“What the hell?” Diana walks slowly down the stairs, poking her finger inside Bear Bear’s belly. When she reaches the living room, she deposits Bear Bear on the coffee table and removes the pennies.
“Phoebe, what are these doing in here?” Diana starts counting, as if the number of pennies will give her an answer.
“Mama, you aren’t supposed to see them.”
“What do you mean? Why are there pennies inside Bear Bear?”
“They’re from Daddy.” Phoebe speaks in a rush of words. “Grandma said sometimes when people die, they send us messages. These pennies are Daddy’s message to me.”
Diana’s heart stutters, as she clutches some of the pennies in her hand. Others spill out into her lap. She loses count at thirty-six.
“Daddy always picked up pennies when he saw them on the ground. He put them in his pocket for later. So now I look for pennies. They’re everywhere, Mama. Everywhere!” Phoebe smiles, her eyes squinting as she strains her cheek muscles. Her hand flies up to her bandaged cheek. “Ow. I forgot.”
Diana tries to hide her twitching mouth. She has no memory of Tom picking up pennies.
“It’s why I fell today. At recess.” Phoebe looks so tiny, curled up under the blanket, with her long hair spread across the pillow and the bandage obscuring half of her face. “I saw a penny on the blacktop and ran to get it. A fourth grader was running to catch a football, and we crashed into each other. He fell on his butt, and I fell on my face.” Phoebe digs her hand into the pocket of her jeans. She holds up a penny. “But I got it.”
Don’t cry. Do not cry,Diana thinks. “You love Bear Bear. Why would you cut him open like this?”
“He’s my most special stuffie in the whole world. That makes him the best place for my pennies.”
“How about a piggy bank instead?”
“No, Bear Bear.” Phoebe rubs his ear between her fingers. “Can you close him up? I’d like to snuggle with him.”
“All right,” Diana says, unprepared for how exhausted this conversation has made her.
“You can have some of my pennies, if you want, Mama. I’m sure it would be good with Daddy.”
Parenthood is challenging enough,Diana thinks as she busies herself putting the pennies back into Bear Bear.But handling this on my own? When will it all stop?
After fixing the safety pin in place, Diana hands Bear Bear to Phoebe. “You keep the pennies, honey,” she says, grief coloring each word. “I think that’s what Daddy would want.”
At bedtime, Diana finds Phoebe in her room, reading to Bear Bear, the bedside table lamp dropping a halo of light around them. Diana stops in the doorway and assesses her daughter. A new emotion surfaced with the discovery of the pennies: guilt. For all she’s missed and keeps missing.
“It’s time for sleep.” Diana enters the room and takes the book from Phoebe, setting it on her bedside table. “First, though, I have something for you.”
“A present?”
In Phoebe’s hands, Diana places the small blue ceramic dish Tom kept in their bedroom. It was where he emptied his discarded change before bed each day. Diana hadn’t touched it since his death. After dinner, though, she dusted it off and dumped it onto her bed to sort the coins. To her astonishment, the dish was filled only with pennies, dozens of them.
“These were your dad’s last pennies. You should have them.”
Phoebe brings the dish up to her face and closes her eyes. She looks like she’s praying, or sending a message. She inhales and her eyelids pop open. “Thank you, Mama,” she says, her voice full of awe. Phoebe makes space next to the lamp for the dish and settles back against the pillow. “See? It’s a sign!”
“A sign?”
“I wanted a message from Daddy, and these pennies are the message.”
Diana wants to run away. Drop everything, leap up and out the door into the night. Run and keep running until all this is over, until moments like this one can’t crush her anymore.
“What’s the message, honey?” she chokes out instead.
“He loves me. More than anything.”
When she’s halfway down the stairs, Diana recognizes the familiarity of Phoebe’s words.When you speak of me to Duncan and Phoebe, tellthem their father was imperfect, but he loved them, and you, more than anything.
A coincidence? A higher power? Or are the words common enough? Diana doesn’t know what to believe, though she admires and is even a bit envious of Phoebe’s faith.
