14. David
DAVID
The wins are small. I hold onto every one.
Erin brings me the numbers on Tuesdays. The second cycle of ATG is doing what we hoped, the counts climbing, the direction finally right, and after she tells me, I sit in the truck in the clinic lot and let myself know what that means for sixty seconds. Then I put it away and drive.
Cleo’s still small and pale, but she’s sleeping through the night.
She talks now the way she used to talk. The questions, the running commentary, the jokes she has already told a hundred times.
The one about the duck and the librarian, which she has delivered every morning for three weeks running.
I’ve never been more grateful for a bad joke in my life.
And then there’s the food. She asks for it — asks — and every mouthful is a win I don’t let myself react to out loud, because she doesn’t need me watching her eat with fear behind my eyes.
Half a piece of toast at breakfast. She says a boiled egg is still too heavy, but the soft whites are fine, and she eats them with her careful attention.
A few bites of Joan’s mac and cheese from the clinic fridge, which Lito delivers to the exam room as reheated "extra-special delivery.
" She’s curious about his chocolate porridge. All of it is a win.
Speaking of Lito, his hands need something to do when the waiting room is quiet.
The beanies have been coming out of the drawer behind the front desk all month.
First plain and warm, then bear ears in soft dark yarn, then a princess crown in sunshine yellow, then last week a dinosaur with small felt spines running from crown to nape that Cleo has declared the best hat in the whole wide world.
She wears it to Tuesday labs so she can feel extra brave.
The bear ears are for Fridays. The princess crown is reserved, and if I reach for the wrong one, she will tell me so.
I massage her hands in the exam room while the drip finishes. Her hands go stiff in the cold and she doesn’t always say so. This Tuesday she sits quiet with both palms turned up while I work my thumbs along her knuckles.
"What about the princess crown?" I ask.
"The princess crown’s special, Daddy." She’s watching the drip line, not me. "Wearing it makes me a princess. Princess crowns are only for special events. It makes sense, right?"
"Absolutely, pumpkin."
She decides this is settled and goes back to watching the drip.
Her platelet count that Tuesday is sixty-eight thousand. I sit in the lot with the engine ticking and let myself know what that means. Then I put it away and go inside.
I’m cooking dinners for three now. It doesn't feel like a conscious decision.
I reach for a third plate, and the table just has three placemats ready.
The kitchen smells like the pasta Cleo requested and the bread I made that morning because Erin mentioned once, in passing, that she liked the smell of bread baking in the oven.
Erin brings Pip along when she comes, because he misses Cleo, of course.
Cleo climbs into the middle chair and negotiates with Pip about window seating and best dinosaur rankings.
Erin sits across from her, asking the right follow-up questions, What kind of rankings? Is he ranking by size or by scariness?
Cleo has opinions, very strong opinions, and I eat my pasta while I listen to the two of them work through the logic. The cabin is warm. Outside, it’s twenty-two degrees and snowing. I don’t press anything about what this is. I just eat my dinner.
Erin’s gray sweater hangs on the hook by the door. Her hook now, right between my jacket and Cleo’s scarf, without either of us arranging it that way. When she comes in, she sees it. She doesn’t say anything. I don’t say anything.
The cabin has three coats by the door, or two coats and a sweater, or the occasional scarf and beanie on top of all of it. At any given time, there are three people’s worth of things hanging there.
At dinner one Tuesday, Cleo holds Pip up beside her plate and announces that he is Erin’s helper.
Erin looks up from across the pancakes. "What kind of helper?"
Cleo squints, tilts her head. "He keeps an eye on you. It’s a very important job."
"I’m sure it is."
"Of course it is, Daddy! Pip’ll make sure Erin is okay so you won’t worry! You always ask what Erin’s doing now a lot."
"All right, pumpkin. Time for bed."
"But Daddyyyyyy —"
The tips of my ears go warm. Nobody at the table corrects her.
I watch Erin’s face do the thing it does when one of Cleo’s sentences lands.
The small surprised smile that starts in her eyes before the rest catches up.
Cleo is already off the chair, negotiating one more pancake bite before bed.
Erin looks back at her plate, and I look at the butter dish between us.
I want to build a future with her.
I haven’t let myself think in those terms in four years. I let it settle in my chest.
I call Laura that week from the truck, the heater just warming up. I ask after her, ask about supplies, ask if she might take Cleo for a weekend visit. Laura listens through all of it.
"I can hear the gears turning, dearie," she says. "Out with it."
I clear my throat. "There’s… there’s someone."
A long silence.
"Does Cleo like her?"
"Cleo loves her to bits."
"Oh!" The line goes quiet for another moment. "That’s good. That’s very good, dearie."
We don't say anything else. I drive the rest of the way to the clinic in the early dark, and the word is still there.
December twenty-first is the Christmas tree lighting day in the square. Cold and clear, the post office square already strung with lights when Erin and I walk Cleo down from the truck. The square smells like cold air and wood smoke.
Cleo is in the princess crown beanie — this is the special occasion, she told me while I folded the KN95 mask over her nose and cheeks. I agreed that it was. She reaches her arms up, and I lift her onto my shoulders, her mittens twisted into my hair, her ankles warm in my hands.
“Daddy, it’s cold!” Cleo says.
“I know.”
“How come you’re not cold?” she asks.
“Because you’re keeping my head warm.”
She thinks about this and takes a firmer grip on my ears.
Erin walks beside me, hands in her coat pockets. Cleo cranes from my shoulders toward her. "Erin! Erin, look!" She bends at the waist, arms out, and Erin steps close enough for Cleo to press a kiss to the top of her head.
Erin looks up at me, the light caught in her face, and something is open there. I tighten my hands on Cleo’s ankles.
The square begins counting down. Ten, nine — the whole town, single voice — and Cleo joins in somewhere around seven, both hands raised. The mayor flips the switch at one.
The lights come up all at once. The tree, the boughs along the storefronts, the fairy lights strung between the post office and the Magnolia and all the way around the square. Cleo goes ohhhh and then ahhhh and reaches up and touches the nearest strand with one mitten.
I haven’t heard that sound in months, that full-lunged delighted sound, and my chest loosens a degree. I look at the lights. Then I look at Erin looking at them, her face tipped up. The moment is one whole breath.
Laura arrives at half past five. Cleo spots her and begins working her way back down my shoulders before I have hold of her ankles. I catch her, pass her down, and watch her run the four steps to Laura’s knees at a pace that three months ago would have left her winded.
"Grammieeee! Merry Christmas! Are we gonna make cookies?"
"All waiting for you at home, dearie. But first, you rest."
"I’ll eat three big ones!"
"Let’s start with one."
"Two!"
"One and a half?"
Cleo squints and thinks hard. "Okay then."
I watch Laura buckle Cleo into the back seat. Careful, practiced, the same hands that have always had this tenderness for the child of her child. I watch for just long enough. Then I turn away.
Laura gives us a small wave. Her car disappears down the road with Cleo making faces through the rear window, her mittened hands pressed to the glass.
Erin and I walk into the Grange Hall.
The music is already up. Old standards, the same ones every December, loud enough to feel in the floor. I stand in the doorway a moment and take the room in.
Linda and Lito at the punch bowl, Lito in mid-sentence with three people at once, all three of them laughing.
Whitlock at the far end of the room with Hank from the garage, the thermos between them, whatever’s in it smelling the way it always smells at Cedar Hollow events, which is not entirely like cocoa.
Joan is working the gingerbread table, moving down the line without commentary, handing the tray to Hal when he arrives with Ruth Mae on his arm and peels off to lend a hand.
Travis and Mara Finn are across the room.
Polly is up on Travis’s shoulders, mittens already missing somewhere.
I feel the lightness at my shoulders, the absent weight of my daughter, and I look at Erin instead.
Pete and Curt Hovis arrive from the farm up the valley in their Christmas sweaters, the ones they bring out for events, bright enough to find each other by in a crowd. Every face I’ve known since I came back to Cedar Hollow the winter after Claire. Same room, same December, same people.
Except this year, Erin is standing beside me.
I don’t let the thought linger. I just stand in it a moment, and then I go get us both something from the punch bowl.