"Yes."
"All right."
She’s quiet again. The shampoo runs down her temple. I rinse it carefully with the small plastic cup that has been on the edge of the bath since she was nine months old.
"Mama."
"Yes."
"The cough man was crying."
My hands keep moving. "Which man?"
"The driving one."
"What was he crying about?"
She thinks about this. She thinks about it for a long second.
"He said sorry. Two times."
I don’t look at my own face in the mirror across the bathroom because if I look at my own face in the mirror across this bathroom, I am going to do a thing that will scare my daughter, and I am not going to do that to my daughter tonight.
I say, "Did anyone else say sorry to you?"
She thinks about it. She shakes her head. Wet hair against her shoulders.
"Brontos was scared," she says.
"Was he?"
"Yes. But he was brave."
"Brontos is very brave."
"I know."
She smiles for the first time. The smile is small. The smile is the fierce, specific, private smile of a child who has just told her mother the worst thing she’s had to tell her, has decided that the telling is enough, and is done with the telling.
I lift her out of the bath.
I wrap her in the big blue towel.
I dry her gently.
? ? ?
Clean dinosaur pajamas. Her purple snow boots are set by the front door for tomorrow because tomorrow is supposed to be a normal day, and I am, in this small action, telling the universe that I have decided what tomorrow is going to be, even if the universe disagrees with me.
I carry her down the hall to her bedroom.
Lex is in the doorway.
He’s been waiting there. He’s not come in. He’s been standing in the doorway in his coat with the wrong sleeve, watching me carry our daughter from the bathroom to her bedroom.
Nora sees him.
She lifts her head from my shoulder. She says, "Daddy."
