“Cookies and juice.” She says it as if I should know this. “In the gym. All the families stay. Leighton’s bringing the black-and-white cookies from Steingold’s. Mommy is bringing ones from Levain.” Leave it to a seven-year-old to name the best cookie places in Chicago. “You have to come to that too.”
Some emotion moves through my chest that I can’t describe.
I crouch back down to her level. “Like I would miss cookies and juice.”
She studies me for a moment the way she does, as if she’s trying to figure out if I mean it. Then she nods and lifts her hoop.
“Okay,” she says. “I’m going to do it ten more times.”
“Ten more times?”
“Yes, you said no reward comes without hard work.”
She starts the routine, and I sit down next to Penelope to watch. Her shoulder is warm against mine. Neither of us says anything. We just watch Hazel run the routine over and over until she’s satisfied.
On the sixth pass, she adds a bow at the end that I did not teach her.
“She made up a bow.” Penelope’s voice is almost wistful.
My throat is doing something I’m not going to look too hard into right now.
I lay my hand over Penelope’s on the step between us. She doesn’t move it. Then I turn my attention back to the backyard.
Hazel runs it again. The bow gets more dramatic, like a curtsy. By the tenth pass, she’s holding it for a full count before she drops the hoop on the grass.
“Can we get Portillo’s now?” Hazel asks.
“Sure.” Penelope smiles at her daughter.
Hazel looks at me. “You’re coming, right?”
“Where else would I be?”
“Go get your shoes.” Penelope watches her go inside for her shoes.
Then we turn to each other, and we’re just sitting on the back steps with two hula hoops on the grass and an empty backyard.
“I think she might know,” Penelope says.
I nod. “Yeah, I think so too.”
“You know she’s going to tell Monroe.”
“Monroe probably already knows. They might be in cahoots with each other, who knows?”
Penelope laughs. Actually laughs. The real one she doesn’t always let out, and I think about the letter I wrote when I was seventeen and how I said she had the best laugh of anyone I’d ever met. All these years later, it’s still the truth.
I stand and hold out my hand.
She takes it, and I pull her up off the step.
I want to hold her and kiss her and tell her how much I love her and her daughter. Every morning since we got together, I’ve wanted to pinch myself to make sure I’m living in the here and now.
The back door swings open.
“Let’s go.” Hazel scurries down the stairs and jumps off the last two. She takes Penelope’s hand, and they walk along the side of the house to the sidewalk.
I follow, but once we’re on the sidewalk, Hazel’s small hand slips into mine. I look over her head at Penelope, and we both smile.
