EPILOGUE
“IWANT CREPES.” Bouncing in her seat, nearly knocking her tablet off of the table, my ten-year-old had far too much energy after a twelve-hour international flight and six hours of sleep. “Chocolate ones!”
“Miss ma’am. Fran?ais, s’il vous pla?t. With manners this time.”
Miracle sighed. “Puis-je avoir des crêpes, s’il vous pla?t?”
“Oui, mon princesse. Set the table, please.”
Miracle hopped up and grabbed the disposable cutlery from the counter and began to set up for breakfast while I grabbed the ingredients for crepes.
It was a good thing we’d had the foresight to have the apartment stocked before we’d arrived because the last thing I wanted to do today was grocery shop.
Or anything at all really. This trip was meant to be a reset from the chaotic, exhausting, and emotionally fulfilling year I’d had, and I fully planned to take advantage.
“Jay fini, mommy.”
“Zh-eye,” I corrected, gently. “Like shy but with a hard G concentration.”
“Zh-eye” she repeated.
“Parfaite. You’ll be a polyglot in no time.”
“Like Daddy?”
“Oof. Only if you’re willing to be in school for the rest of your life.”
Pouring too many mini chocolate chips into the batter I was mixing, I tested the thickness twice, added a little milk, then cut on the stove.
“I wonder if animals speak in different languages, too,” she said. “Like if they meet another species, do they all automatically understand one another’s sounds or are they just as confused by some animals as we are?”
“I believe if anyone will find out, it’s you, baby.”
Ladling a thin layer of the mixture onto the skillet, I worked in silence while Miracle diverted her attention to her tablet. I’d finished the third crepe when a familiar heat hit my back and a deep voice spoke low enough that only I could hear.
“What are you doing awake?”
I glanced at the analog clock on the wall that read 03:12 and shrugged. “It’s eight back home and I couldn’t sleep, so I got up for a snack and caught this little gremlin watching Discovery Channel in the living room with the sound off and the subtitles on.”
“Let me guess, the short, but exciting lifespan of the Opossum.”
“Close—skunks.”
“I’m not sure if I should be intrigued or concerned that our child has developed an affection for the pests of the wild.”
“Shhh,” I hushed him. “Don’t let her hear you. The social rejects of the woodland animals have found their queen and she feeds off of her haters.”
Wrapping his huge arms around my shoulders, my husband buried his face into my hair. “You think she’s ready for junior high?”
I tensed. Of all the conversations I wanted to have on a family vacation, this one hadn’t even made the short list.
Academically, Miracle was excelling beyond a rate her current curriculum could sustain and she was…
well, bored. However, physically, developmentally, she was the same little girl who had yet to hit a growth spurt and still required a booster seat.
She enjoyed Discovery Channel and conservationist YouTube, but she also liked tea parties with her stuffed animals and made Abraham sleep on the floor in her room after a nightmare.
She still sucked her thumb and hid behind me in front of strangers, and in so many ways, she was still just a little girl.
Junior high might as well have been a different realm in comparison.
The last thing I wanted was to throw my baby to the wolves just so she could take a few more advanced courses.
“We still have three months,” I warned. “Let me enjoy my vacation, please?”
When I was done with the crepes, I turned the burner off and Abraham grabbed the fruit and Miracle’s Nutella from the fridge.
Blocking me in with his gargantuan body, he barricaded my arms so I couldn’t move them. “She doesn’t need to skip grades. We can afford tutors. I can retire. Stay home with her.”
“Hm. And have some young grad student around my husband all day? I’d rather eat the soles of old work boots.”
“Princesse,” Abraham called out.
“Yes, Daddy?”
“Food’s almost ready. Put the iPad away and go wash your hands.”
When Miracle was out of earshot, he turned me around to face him and lifted my chin with his fingers. “What’s the real problem?”
My insecurities suddenly felt so silly under a spotlight, but even still, they were no less real and without proper resolution, they weren’t going away.
Unwilling to look him in the eye, I admitted the truth.
“I haven’t had her three years, Abraham,” I said, lowering my voice.
“And if I’m lucky, I have maybe three or four more before she wants to spend even less time with me and more with other peoples’ children who will undoubtedly replace her fears of bad dreams and spiders with calories and acne and now I have people telling me I should fast track the process by skipping milestones I am rightfully entitled to. That’s my problem.”
Nodding calmly, he studied me in a way that would’ve pissed me off if I didn’t know him. My husband removed a fork I didn’t realize I was holding and set it on the plate of cooling crepes. Then swallowed me into his arms. “I see.”
“I know this is an overreaction but is it really so bad that I want to nurture her weird as long as I can before someone tries to beat it out of her?”
“Of course not.”
“Then I need you to tell me what’s real,” I said, burying my face in his chest. “Remind me.”
He considered that before he spoke. “What’s real is, our daughter is smart.
And in a few years, Miri’s education will surpass our capabilities.
We can keep her in the offered electives for her grade level, but her core classes will be with children who are older, physically and socially.
She will come home with questions that will be difficult to answer, but that doesn’t mean we avoid them.
Raising a child to think for themselves, trust their own judgment, show bravery in the face of uncertainty, means allowing a leash of freedom they could potentially tangle themselves in. ”
“Okay, you can stop reminding me now.”
Abraham pulled away to look at me. “What did I tell you when she started asking if I was going to be her father?”
God, I both hated and respected him so much when he stayed on topic.
“That if I agreed to let you adopt her, you’d always have my back,” I murmured.
“I love Miri. I love being her parent more than I could’ve thought possible. But everything about her that I want to protect and preserve comes from you. Whatever you decide, trust in it. Because I do.”
Just then, Miracle skipped back into the kitchen, coming to an abrupt halt to show Abraham her clean hands, then took her seat.
Abraham carried the plate of crepes and toppings to the table and I grabbed the juice.
While we ate, Miracle talked about her newest skunk obsession and while the idea was particularly unsettling breakfast table conversation, I never grew tired of her enthusiasm.
She was a sensitive girl with a heart for forgotten creatures and having experienced exactly what it felt like to have my own childhood fixations criticized and dismissed, I never wanted to do that to her.
She’d been through so much in just a few years with the adoption. Then with me getting remarried, I’d worried about how well she was adjusting, but one thing Miracle could never claim to be, was stingy with love.
Though I’d been open with her from the beginning about the divorce and she’d seen many of Abraham’s photos on the walls in the house or in albums, it’d taken me close to six months to finally tell her we were seeing one another again.
Then another three before I’d agreed to marry him.
Even still, my caution was no match for Miracle’s excitement.
When he visited the house to mow the lawn or check my oil, or bring one of his special dinners, she’d sprint to his SUV before he’d even parked, pulling him by his hand toward the house to show him her most recent painting or something new she’d learned at karate, and my heart was simply no match for the patient way he listened and spent time answering all of her questions.
He parented Miri with such a kindness and gentleness that my chest ached as much for the little girl inside of me who’d never had such a privilege as it soared for my daughter.
“Mommy.”
I glanced up from my plate and saw her expectant face. “Sorry, what?”
“Daddy says you made a dress so pretty, a runway model wore it in a show. Is that true?”
Licking my thumb, I reached over to wipe a chocolate smear from her cheek.
“It is. I made that dress right here in Paris.” Never mind the fact that I’d only seen the gown in photos and I still didn’t remember anything about our honeymoon.
But that was what this trip was for. I wasn’t rewriting those memories—The woman who’d gone into the water deserved to hold onto those forever—but rather, I was simply revisiting them.
Taking in places I’d been, seen, and experienced, and falling in love with them a second time.
“Now we get to see the city together,” I told her. “And you get to be part of our story.”
“For permanent,” she said, seriously.
I met Abraham’s eyes as he kissed her forehead. “Yes.”
THE END
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