Chapter 6: What Mia Had Never Said Out Loud
We waited until after breakfast.
Daniel made pancakes.
Mia ate two and a half, which was normal for her, and then she asked if she could watch cartoons.
We said yes.
We let her watch for twenty minutes, and then Daniel turned the volume down and sat on the coffee table in front of her.
"Bug," he said, "can we talk for a little while?"
She looked at him.
Then at me, sitting on the couch beside her.
Then back at him.
"Am I in trouble?"
"No," he said immediately.
"You are absolutely not in trouble.
Not even a little bit."
She relaxed slightly.
Just slightly.
"I want to ask you some things about Grandma Patricia," he said.
"And I need you to tell me the truth, even if it feels scary.
Can you do that?"
She picked at the edge of her sleeve.
"Grandma said not to tell."
"Tell what, sweetheart?" I asked.
Mia looked at her hands.
"She said if I told you things, you'd be sad.
And if you were sad, it was my fault."
Daniel's jaw tightened.
He kept his voice even.
"Mia, nothing you tell us is your fault.
Nothing.
Do you understand that?"
She nodded, but it was the nod of a child who has heard something and doesn't fully believe it yet.
"Has Grandma Patricia ever left you alone before yesterday?" I asked.
A pause.
"At Easter," she said quietly.
"You were at Auntie Rachel's.
She put me in the backyard and said to stay by the swing.
I stayed there for a long time."
"How long?"
"Until it got cold." She looked up.
"I didn't go inside because she said not to."
Daniel pressed his hands together between his knees.
He didn't look at me.
He couldn't.
"Has she ever said anything to you?" I asked.
"About our family?
About Daddy and me?"
Mia was quiet for a moment.
"She says I look like your family," she said.
"She says it like it's bad."
"What else?"
"She says—" Mia stopped.
Started again.
"She says you took Daddy away from his real family.
And that I'm the reason he doesn't visit enough." She said it in a small, flat voice, the way children repeat things they don't fully understand but have memorized perfectly.
"She says if I wasn't born, things would be different."
The room was very still.
I looked at my daughter's face.
She was watching me carefully, the way she always did when she wasn't sure how an adult was going to react.
"Mia," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected, "none of that is true.
Not one word of it."
"I know," she said.
But she said it the way children say I know when they don't know.
When they've been told something so many times by someone so certain that the doubt has taken root anyway.
Daniel stood up.
He walked to the window.
His back was to us.
"Daddy?" Mia said.
He turned around.
His eyes were wet.
He crossed the room and sat beside her on the couch and put his arm around her and pulled her into his side.
"You are the best thing that ever happened to me," he said.
"You and your mom.
That's the truth.
That's the only truth."
She leaned against him.
Her small hand found his.
"Is Grandma going to be mad?" she asked.
"Grandma," Daniel said carefully, "is going to need to make some very big changes.
And until she does, you won't have to see her."
Mia looked up at him.
Something moved across her face.
Something that looked, terribly, like relief.
That was the moment I understood how long this had been happening.
Not days.
Not months.
I went upstairs and called Karen.
She picked up on the second ring.
"She told us," I said.
"About Easter.
About what Patricia has been saying to her."
Karen was quiet for a moment.
"How much did she know?"
"Enough," I said.
"Karen, she told Mia that she was the reason Daniel doesn't visit.
That if Mia hadn't been born, things would be different."
A long silence.
"I didn't know about that part," Karen said.
"I'm sorry.
I didn't know it had gone that far."
"I need to know," I said.
"Is there anything else?
Anything you've seen or heard that you haven't told me?"
Karen took a breath.
May you like
"Yes," she said.
"There is."
