Chapter 15 - A Place at the Table
For a moment, Grant couldn't speak.
Rose leaned against his leg.
“That's where you were at work.”
He looked closer.
There was Rose, holding Nora's hand.
Leah stood beside them with enormous green shoes.
Emma's photograph sat on a little shelf, carefully drawn inside its frame.
And there was Grant, near the edge of the page, with space between himself and everyone else.
“Can I move closer?” he asked.
Rose considered him with great seriousness.
Then she handed him a purple crayon.
“You have to draw your feet this time.”
He sat down and did.
Life didn't become perfect after court.
Rose still hated being shut out of rooms.
Grant still caught himself reaching for his phone when work became loud and demanding.
Sometimes Nora gave him a look, and sometimes he noticed on his own.
He kept going to his own counseling appointments.
He was learning that showing up once could save a life. Showing up each day could help a child feel safe in it.
Rose kept seeing Marisol.
Emma's cedar chest stayed open often enough that it stopped looking like a grave and started looking like a family collection.
On Rose's fifth birthday, there were twelve guests in the backyard.
No photographers.
No hired orchestra.
Just crooked streamers, paper plates, and a cake leaning slightly to the left.
Grant had insisted on baking it.
Leah called it structurally adventurous.
Rose loved it.
When a cup of pink lemonade spilled across the table, she froze.
Grant reached for a towel and waited.
Rose looked at the spreading puddle.
Then she looked at him.
“Just lemonade?”
He smiled.
“Just lemonade.”
She helped him wipe it up.
Then she ran back to her friends without apologizing for existing.
That night, Grant brushed the tangles from her hair.
The same mirror.
The same little stool.
A different kind of quiet.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, Rosie?”
“I don't want you to find me a mommy right now.”
He stopped brushing long enough to meet her eyes in the mirror.
“Okay.”
“I have my mommy. In pictures and stories.”
“You do.”
“And Nora. And Aunt Leah.”
“Yes.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I just want you to stay Daddy.”
He put the brush aside and knelt beside the stool.
“That's a job I'm keeping.”
Rose wrapped both arms around his neck.
Her healed arm pressed firmly against his shoulder.
She didn't ask permission.
Later, after he tucked her in, he left the door open exactly as wide as she wanted.
He had almost reached the stairs when she called out.
“Daddy, I need something.”
He turned immediately.
“Tell me.”
May you like
She smiled from beneath the blanket, already certain he would come back.
And for the first time in a very long time, Rose didn't begin with an apology.
