CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ISABELLA
The sitting room looks like a toy shop after an earthquake.
I stand in the doorway for several seconds, trying to process the amount of stuff scattered across the rug.
Lily is sitting in the middle of four open boxes, while a dollhouse nearly as tall as she is takes up half the room.
There is also a telescope, a microscope, a science kit, a complete collection of illustrated books, and a brand-new bicycle with a bow tied to the handlebars.
The bicycle Lily already owns is in the small storage area beside the garden. It is simple, scuffed from use, and covered in crooked stickers, but it still fits her perfectly well.
I turn to Alexander.
“What is all this?”
His expression changes before he answers. He knows he has made a mistake.
“Presents.”
“I managed to work that part out.”
Lily hugs one of the boxes against her chest.
“Dad brought them! There’s a real microscope, a house with lights, and a telescope that can see other planets.”
“I believe the telescope’s capabilities may have been slightly exaggerated,” Alexander says.
“It can see the Moon.”
“That, certainly.”
My daughter looks between us, waiting for me to share her enthusiasm. I keep my voice controlled for her sake.
“Lily, choose one thing to take upstairs while I talk to your dad.”
Some of the excitement leaves her face.
“Only one?”
“For now.”
She looks at Alexander in search of a more favorable ruling. He opens his mouth, meets my eyes, and closes it again.
“Just one,” he confirms. “Your mum and I need to talk about the rest.”
Lily chooses the science kit, exactly as I knew she would, and runs upstairs. I wait until her footsteps disappear before turning back to Alexander.
“This isn’t taking care of her.”
“I know.”
The immediate answer knocks some of the anger out of place.
“If you know, why did you bring all of it into this house?”
Alexander puts his hands in his pockets, not defensively but as though he needs to stop them from trying to fix the situation.
“Because I didn’t know what else to do.”
“You know how to buy things.”
“Yes.”
“You have always tried to solve discomfort with money, and you are not going to do that with Lily.”
“I don’t intend to.”
I gesture toward the room.
“This is exactly that.”
He looks at the bicycle and then at the open boxes.
“I bought all of it the first night after I received the DNA result, before I met her.”
I fall silent.
“I opened a file on my computer and tried to write down what I knew about my daughter,” he continues. “There were spaces for her school, her fears, her favorite food, her books, the things she disliked. Almost all of them were blank.”
My throat tightens, but I refuse to let sympathy erase the problem.
“So you tried to fill the absence with objects.”
“Yes. Buying something was immediate. Learning who she is would take time, and that night I couldn’t bear the idea of waiting.”
“Lily cannot become somewhere you dump the guilt of losing five years.”
“I understand that now.”
“She is going to be angry when she finds out most of these are leaving.”
Alexander looks toward the stairs.
“I’ll explain.”
“Without telling her I’m the one making you return them.”
“The mistake was mine. I won’t make you responsible for it.”
The right answer takes another edge off my anger, though it does not remove it completely.
“The books can stay,” I decide. “She’ll read them for years, as long as none of them are first editions that need to live behind glass.”
A hint of a smile appears.
“They’re ordinary children’s books.”
“The telescope can stay too, but it becomes something for the household, not an individual gift. We use it together.”
“Agreed.”
“The bicycle stays in storage until the one she has no longer fits.”
Alexander glances toward the window, through which part of the storage shed is visible.
“It looks small for her, and the rear tire is badly worn.”
“It still fits.”
“Can I at least replace the tire?”
“You can repair the bicycle she already loves.”
He accepts the compromise.
“The dollhouse, the microscope, and everything else go back. You can save the microscope for her birthday.”
“I can keep one thing for a future occasion?”
“One.”
“Then the microscope.”
“And before you give it to her, you ask whether she still wants one.”
Alexander takes his phone out of his pocket.
“I’ll arrange collection.”
I lift a hand before he can call.
“First, you talk to Lily. I don’t want her coming downstairs to find everything gone.”
We go upstairs together.
Lily is on the floor of her room with the science kit spread around her. There is baking soda, food coloring, small containers, and an instruction booklet open to a page about volcanoes.
The moment she sees us, she wraps both arms around the box.
“I picked this one.”
“The kit is staying,” I assure her.
Alexander crouches in front of her.
“I bought too many toys.”
Lily looks toward the door.
“Is Mum angry?”
“Your mum explained something I should have understood before. I didn’t know what you liked, so I tried to buy lots of different options all at once.”
“I liked all of them.”
“I’m sure you did. It still wasn’t a very good decision.”
She frowns.
“Why?”
Alexander searches for an answer that makes sense to a child.
“Because presents should show that someone has been paying attention to you. I’m still learning who you are, and I tried to skip that part.”
Lily looks down at the science kit.
“Are you taking everything away?”
“The books and the telescope are staying. I’m also going to fix your current bicycle, if you let me. Everything else will either be returned or saved for another occasion.”
“Even the house?”
“Even the house.”
She is visibly disappointed.
“That’s bad.”
“You’re allowed to be angry with me.”
“I am.”
Alexander nods without reaching for chocolate, a promise, or another toy to make the emotion disappear.
“I understand.”
“Can I still make the volcano?”
“You can, if your mum agrees.”
Lily looks at me.
“Can we make it erupt?”
“I don’t have time today to scrub lava off the walls.”
“Dad can clean it.”
I look at Alexander.
“He can.”
Lily’s face lights up.
“Do you know how to make a volcano?”
There is a brief pause.
“Not yet, but we can read the instructions and learn together.”
She celebrates as though he has just given her the best news of the day. Alexander stays beside her while they inspect the manual, and I leave before he notices what that small answer does to me.
This man is going to destroy me with ordinary things.
The delivery team returns two hours later. Alexander instructs them to remove only the items we agreed on and stops one employee from dismantling the telescope. Lily watches from the stairs, sulking but neither crying nor bargaining again.
When the dollhouse passes through the door, she looks at her father.
“I’m still angry.”
“I know.”
“It might go away later.”
“I hope it does, but it doesn’t have to yet.”
Lily considers that for a few seconds.
“Okay.”
That afternoon, I find the two of them in the kitchen. Alexander has read every instruction and arranged the ingredients into separate containers. Lily has read none of them, pours in far too much vinegar, and adds enough food coloring to stain the entire counter.
Red foam spills over the container, spreads across the table, and starts dripping onto the floor.
Lily shrieks with delight. Alexander tries to contain the eruption with a cloth, knocks another container over in the process, and somehow makes the disaster worse. Foam reaches his shirt and leaves a bright red stain across the cuff.
I start laughing.
It is not polite or controlled. It is real laughter, the kind that forces me to grip the doorframe. Both of them turn toward me.
Alexander goes still, as though hearing me laugh is more surprising than finding the kitchen covered in artificial lava.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I manage.
Lily starts laughing too.
“Dad made a huge mess!”
“A historic first,” I say.
Alexander looks down at the soaked cloth in his hand.
“I don’t usually make messes.”
“You destroyed our first attempt at a marriage,” I say before I can stop myself.
The laughter dies.
Lily is still scooping foam with a spoon and does not fully understand, but Alexander does. Instead of defending himself, he simply acknowledges it.
“I made a much bigger mess that time.”
Guilt arrives even though I do not want it. He deserves the truth, but Lily does not deserve to grow up in a house where every light moment turns into a weapon.
“I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
Alexander sets the cloth on the counter.
“You don’t need to protect me from something that’s true.”
“I’m not protecting you. I’m trying not to turn our daughter into an audience for a war that doesn’t belong to her.”
“You’re right. I shouldn’t have answered that way in front of her either.”
Lily lifts her head.
“What happened with the first wedding?”
Damn it.
“We didn’t actually get married that time,” I explain.
“Why not?”
Silence stretches. Alexander prepares to answer, but I touch his arm without thinking. He stops immediately and lets me decide how much of the truth Lily can hear.
“We had a very big argument and didn’t know how to fix it,” I say. “Your dad believed something that wasn’t true, I was very hurt, and we stopped being together.”
“Was the fight about me?”
“It wasn’t your fault,” we say at the same time.
Lily looks from one of us to the other.
“This house has a no-yelling rule.”
“It does.”
“So don’t have another huge fight.”
The logic is childish, simple, and impossible.
“We’ll try to talk better,” I promise.
Alexander does not speak for both of us.
“I’ll try,” he says.
Lily returns to her volcano.
My hand is still resting on his arm. The moment I realize it, I pull away quickly, but Alexander does not follow the movement, touch my wrist, or turn the accidental contact into hope.
That matters.
After the experiment, he cleans the kitchen with Lily. It takes three times as long because she moves the wet cloth in circles and insists on saving some of the “lava” inside a jar for later analysis.
Alexander needs to change his shirt. Before leaving the kitchen, he examines the stain.
“Does food coloring come out?”
“Depends on the fabric.”
“The shirt is Egyptian cotton.”
“Then Egypt is losing a shirt.”
Lily starts laughing again.
At dinner, she tells my mother over a video call that Dad is a scientist. Alexander tries to correct her, but Lily insists that anyone capable of building a volcano qualifies.
When bedtime comes, he reads one of the books that stayed. The story is about a whale that gets separated from its family and eventually finds its way home. I remain in the corridor, listening as Alexander’s voice slows when he realizes what the story is about.
He finishes without skipping a page.
Lily asks for another story.
“Tomorrow,” Alexander says, then checks his phone before making the promise. “My last meeting finishes at six. I can be here by seven and read two.”
“Three.”
“Two stories and one chapter of that book about marine dinosaurs.”
“Okay.”
I am beginning to understand that he takes every promise he makes to her seriously.
Later, after Lily is asleep, I go downstairs for water and find Alexander at the table with a sheet of paper in front of him.
“What’s that?”
He turns the page toward me.
At the top is Lily. Underneath are categories: favorite foods, dislikes, books, programs, routine, school, doctor, allergies, friends, fears.
“Are you compiling a dossier on our daughter?”
“No.”
“It looks remarkably like one.”
He pushes the sheet toward me. Most of it is still blank, and the few notes are handwritten.
Broccoli = trees. Doesn’t like raw tomato. Chocolate. Astronomy? Volcanoes. Gets angry when toys are returned but survives.
I have to suppress a smile.
“The astronomy obsession comes and goes.”
Alexander picks up the pen.
“What has replaced it?”
“Marine dinosaurs.”
“Is there a favorite?”
“Liopleurodon.”
He looks up.
“Is that an actual word?”
“Prepare yourself for worse.”
Alexander begins writing with visible difficulty.
“Lio…”
“Pleurodon.”
“That sounds like linguistic fraud.”
I laugh again. This time, no tragedy follows immediately after the sound. There is only a man trying to learn the name of a prehistoric creature because his daughter likes it.
I sit across from him.
“Why are you making the list?”
Alexander studies the page before answering.
“I could pay someone to give me all of this information, but that wouldn’t mean I had learned it. I only want to write down what Lily tells me or what I notice when I’m with her.”
“It still feels slightly corporate.”
“I may require a transitional period.”
“Do not produce quarterly reports on her childhood.”
“I’ll try to resist.”
I point toward the section marked fears.
“She’s afraid of thunder, although she pretends she isn’t.”
His pen moves.
“What helps?”
“A light left on and someone nearby. Don’t tell her you know before it happens. She’ll be embarrassed.”
“Understood.”
“She’s allergic to penicillin. It’s in the medical records, but you need to memorize it.”
He writes the words down and underlines them twice.
“Anything else important?”
“She hates long goodbyes. The longer someone hesitates before leaving, the more anxious she becomes.”
Alexander waits a moment before writing that one down.
“So I should tell her when I’ll be back and then leave.”
“Exactly. Then you have to come back when you promised.”
“I will.”
It is not a grand declaration. Even so, I believe he will do everything within his power to keep it.
He looks at the list again.
“Buying isn’t caring,” he says.
I recognize my own words.
“No.”
“Paying attention is.”
“It’s a start.”
Alexander nods without asking me to give him anything more than that.
Perhaps this is exactly what I meant when I told him he would have to earn the place of father. It is not about dollhouses, bicycles, or gestures impressive enough to appear in photographs.
It is about knowledge, presence, and repetition. About knowing which marine dinosaur to look for in a book, how to prepare for a thunderstorm, and why a little girl calls through a corridor simply to make sure someone is still there.
Alexander does not know all those answers yet.
For the first time, however, he seems willing to learn them at Lily’s pace instead of trying to buy a shortcut.