Chapter 6 #2
Juliet set her fork and knife back down. She folded her hands. “That’s actually something we need to talk about.”
Danica matched her mother, putting down her utensils and linking her fingers together. “Mom, I know you get weird and lonely in Greenwich, but…”
Juliet’s heart felt fuzzy. “It’s not that, honey. It’s your dad. He won’t be in the city this summer.”
Danica lurched her head back. “Where is he going?”
Juliet swallowed. Shonda passed by just then, fluttering her fingers and mouthing, “Hope it’s tasty?” Juliet couldn’t bring herself to answer.
“Your dad accepted a job in Singapore,” Juliet said flatly. “He’s moving next week.”
Danica’s eyes bugged out of her head. “Singapore?” But just as soon as the location struck her, just as soon as she wrapped her mind around it, she said, “I want to go with him.”
Juliet had been worried about this. “I don’t know, honey. Singapore is really far.”
“But it’s exciting. I need to have an exciting life,” Danica shot back. “That’s what writers do. They travel. They see new cultures. They meet new people.”
“It’s complicated when you’re fourteen years old,” Juliet said. “Your school is here. And what about Mary?”
“Mary would jump at the chance to move to Singapore,” Danica said. “Honestly, it would be great. There isn’t room for me at your apartment in Greenwich, anyway.”
Juliet was starting to feel small, like a bug that Danica could crush with her shoe. “You aren’t going to Singapore, Danica. I’m sorry.”
Danica flared her nostrils. Their food was now the last thing on their minds. “But doesn’t this mean we can move back to the Upper West Side apartment?”
Juliet wanted to laugh at that. What a beautiful thing that might have been, if only Alvin cared at all about the mother and child he was leaving behind. “We’re staying in Greenwich. I like it there! It’s less stuffy. Filled with artists and writers and…”
Perhaps because she was fully comprehending this, Danica burst into tears and got to her feet. “This is not happening! This is not happening!” And then, she ran for the exit and shot down the stairs.
Exasperated, Juliet followed her, waving toward Shonda to tell her that there was an emergency, but she’d be back to take care of the bill. Shonda looked worried. Just before Juliet ducked down the stairs after her daughter, she heard Shonda calling out, asking if there was anything she could do.
“Nothing! There’s nothing!” Juliet cried back, although by then, she was already in the stairwell, chasing her daughter.
Tears fell from her eyes and streaked her cheeks.
She thought she could hear Danica a few floors below, gasping for air.
But when Juliet reached the sidewalk outside the building, she turned left, then right, and had no concept of which direction Danica had gone.
Panic made her legs shake. She wanted to ask the people on the streets, to demand where her daughter had gone.
But there was an anonymity in a city like this, a feeling that everyone was only out for themselves and what they could get.
Danica was gone. Maybe she was headed to her father’s apartment?
Oh, but that would really enrage Alvin, and Juliet didn’t want Danica to see that.
Fully sobbing, now, Juliet took off toward the Upper West Side.
It wasn’t so far to the apartment, and Danica wasn’t the sportiest of people.
Maybe Juliet could catch her. But as she raced through the city, searching, Juliet found her mind tracing back to that awful, dark night so many years ago, the night when her and Theo’s lives had taken the darkest possible timeline.
Every year of Juliet’s life since that spring, Juliet had thanked her lucky stars to be alive. She’d reminded herself that life was not a given, that it could be taken away at any moment.
But being a mother exacerbated those feelings. Now, Juliet was horribly, painfully aware that her daughter could be taken from her at any time. Fear was the only constant, when it came to the enormous amount of love she had for Danica.
After nearly an hour of searching and calling and growing irate and frustrated, Juliet came to a halt near Central Park, gasping for breath.
For reasons that she couldn’t fully explain, for reasons that it would probably take a therapist years to unpack, she dialed Ivy’s number.
When Ivy answered, there was a tentativeness to her tone.
“Juliet?” She sounded like she hadn’t expected to hear from Juliet ever again.
“Ivy,” Juliet cried. “Ivy, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.”
“Juliet? What’s happening?” But when Juliet couldn’t answer, Ivy went on, “You need to take some breaths. Calm down. Let me know what’s happening.”
Juliet flailed forward and crashed against the side of a tree, before sitting in front of it, wrapped in a tight ball. “He’s leaving her,” Juliet whispered. “He left me a long time ago, but I didn’t think he’d leave her.”
“I don’t understand,” Ivy said. “Who left whom?”
But there was too much to explain, too many secrets in Juliet’s heart.
Rather than explain anything else, she brought her phone from her ear and made to hang up.
But just then, she spotted her: a girl of fourteen, sprawled out in front of a tree in Central Park not far from Juliet, weeping into her hands.
It was Danica. she was all right. For now.