Chapter 10: The Counting Paper
He picked Nia up from the after-school program at five o'clock.
She came out through the double doors with her backpack bouncing, her coat half-zipped, her face doing the thing it always did when she saw him waiting — the full-face light, the kind that started at the eyes.
She ran the last ten feet and hit him at the waist.
He caught her and held on.
"How was today?" he said into the top of her head.
"Good.
We did fractions." She leaned back to look at him.
"Fractions are weird."
"They get better."
"Mrs.
Calloway says you came in this morning."
"I did."
She studied his face.
That precise, careful attention.
"Is everything okay?"
"Everything is okay," he said.
"Come on.
I thought we'd pick up dinner somewhere.
Anywhere you want."
She thought about this with great seriousness.
"Pizza?"
"Pizza," he said.
They drove with the radio on low, Nia narrating the fractions lesson in the back seat, her voice filling the car easily, the way it always did when she was comfortable and she had something to say.
He listened to all of it.
At the restaurant they sat across from each other in a corner booth, and she ate two slices before he had finished one, and she talked about her friend Jade and about the book she was reading and about a dog she had seen on the walk to the car.
He watched her talk and felt something in his chest that was not quite finished hurting but was beginning, slowly, to ease.
After the plates were cleared and they were waiting for the check, she was quiet for a moment.
"Daddy," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Is Vivian ever coming back?"
"No," he said.
"She's not."
Nia nodded.
She picked at a loose thread on her sleeve.
"I didn't like it when you weren't home," she said.
"I was scared."
"I know, baby.
I'm sorry."
"I knew you didn't know," she said.
Matter-of-factly.
The way she said things she had thought about for a long time.
"Because when you were there, it was different.
She was different when you were there." She looked up at him.
"I knew you would help if you knew.
I just didn't know how to tell you."
He reached across the table and put his hand over hers.
"You told me," he said.
"You told me, and I heard you."
She nodded.
She looked at their hands.
"I'm going to make some changes," he said.
"About traveling.
I've already talked to my job.
I'm going to be home more.
A lot more."
She looked up.
"Really?"
"Really.
And we're going to find someone — a real person, someone we both meet and we both decide — to help when I have to be away.
But it'll be different.
You'll know them.
You'll like them.
And you'll always, always be able to call me."
She was quiet for a moment.
"Okay," she said.
Simply.
Like she had decided to trust him, and the deciding was done.
He paid the check.
They drove home.
He helped her with the last of her homework at the kitchen table while she ate a bowl of cereal she didn't need but wanted, just because she wanted it and she could, and he let her eat it and said nothing.
He put her to bed at eight-thirty.
He sat on the edge of her bed and they did the thing they had always done when he was home — she told him one good thing from the day and one hard thing, and he did the same.
"Good thing," she said.
"Pizza.
Definitely pizza."
He smiled.
"Good thing for me too.
Hard thing?"
She thought.
"I had a dream last night that I forgot my backpack and I had to go to school without it and everyone laughed." She considered.
"That was scary."
"That sounds scary," he agreed.
"Hard thing for me — some difficult phone calls today.
But they're done now."
She nodded seriously.
"Good thing?" she asked.
"Picking you up this afternoon," he said.
"Watching you come through those doors."
She smiled.
The full one.
He kissed her forehead.
He turned off the lamp.
He left the door open two inches, the way she liked it, so the hallway light came through.
He went to the kitchen and stood at the counter and made himself a cup of tea he didn't particularly want, just to have something to do with his hands.
He thought about Vivian.
About Angela.
About his mother sitting in that chair with her hands folded, looking smaller than he had ever seen her look.
He was not finished with any of it.
There would be more calls, more documents, more things to decide.
Patricia would file the motions in the morning.
The case would take time.
His mother would call when she was ready, and he would decide then whether he was ready to answer.
But Nia was asleep down the hall.
And she had eaten dinner.
And tomorrow morning he would make her breakfast and she would eat it at the table without counting the days until he came home, because he would already be there.
He thought about what Mrs.
Calloway had told him.
*She keeps a little count on a piece of paper in her desk.*
After a moment, he walked back down the hall and gently, quietly, opened Nia's desk drawer.
It was there.
A small square of paper, folded once.
He opened it.
A grid of small pencil marks.
Groups of five, the fifth one drawn through the others the way children learn to count.
Thirty-one marks in total.
Thirty-one days she had counted while he was away.
At the bottom of the paper, in her careful seven-year-old handwriting, just one word.
*Daddy.*
He folded the paper and held it in his hand for a long moment.
Then he placed it back in the drawer, exactly where he had found it, and closed it gently.
He walked back down the hall.
In the kitchen he finished his tea.
He rinsed the cup.
He turned off the light.
And when he went to bed that night, he left his own door open a few inches — so that if Nia woke up and looked down the hall, she would see the light on his side was off, and she would know he was home, and she would not need to count anymore.
---
*Some people never see the harm they cause until someone finally stops letting it go unseen.
And some children wait quietly, with all the faith in the world, for the parent who will actually show up.*
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