Chapter 5: What Olivia Had Already Told Grandma
My mom was sitting on the living room sofa with Olivia in her lap.
Olivia's face was pressed into my mom's shoulder.
Her small hand was fisted in the fabric of my mom's blouse.
She was not crying anymore.
She had gone past crying into that exhausted stillness that children reach when they have been frightened for too long.
My dad stood near the window with his arms crossed.
"Your mother has been talking to Olivia," he said.
I looked at my mom.
She looked back at me with an expression I had not seen on her face since the hospital.
Since the night everything changed the first time.
"Sit down, Ethan," she said.
I sat in the chair across from her.
Claire stood in the doorway.
My mom stroked Olivia's hair slowly, the way she used to stroke mine when I was small and sick.
"Olivia," she said softly.
"Can you tell Daddy what you told Grandma?
Just the parts you remember.
You don't have to say everything."
Olivia turned her head slightly.
She looked at me from the shelter of my mother's shoulder.
"She said Mommy went away because she didn't want me," Olivia said.
"She said that's why Mommy never came back."
The room went very quiet.
"She told you that?" I asked.
My voice came out carefully, the way you carry something that might shatter.
Olivia nodded.
"She said mommies who love their babies don't leave.
And mine left.
So that means she didn't want me."
My mom's hand kept moving through Olivia's hair.
Steady.
Slow.
The only steady thing in the room.
"When did she say this, sweetheart?" Claire asked from the doorway.
"Lots of times.
When I cried for Mommy at night.
She would come in and say crying doesn't help because Mommy chose to go."
My dad uncrossed his arms.
He turned and looked out the window.
I could not speak.
I sat there and I could not find a single word because every word I knew felt too small for what was sitting in that room with us.
My mom looked at me over the top of Olivia's head.
"There is more," she said quietly.
I nodded once.
"She told Olivia that you were going to have a new baby.
A real one.
And that when the new baby came, Olivia would go live somewhere else.
She told her this more than once.
She told her to start getting used to the idea."
Olivia's voice came out small and muffled against my mom's shoulder.
"I didn't want to go somewhere else, Daddy.
I tried to be good.
I ate my food even when she took most of it.
I tried not to cry in the closet.
I tried really hard."
Something inside my chest gave way completely.
I moved from the chair to the sofa.
My mom shifted so I could sit beside them.
I put my arms around Olivia and she came to me immediately, all of her, the way she used to when she was smaller and the world was just the two of us.
"You are not going anywhere," I said into her hair.
"You are staying right here.
This is your home.
You are my daughter and you are staying right here."
She held on tighter.
"Promise?"
"I promise."
My dad turned from the window.
His eyes were red at the edges.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"The bedroom," Claire said.
He nodded slowly.
"Then someone needs to call someone tonight.
Not tomorrow.
Tonight."
May you like
From down the hallway, Madison's voice came through the closed bedroom door — calm, unhurried, as if she were placing an order.
She was on the phone.
