Opal smiles and nods, and I watch as he gently grills her for information about her new friend. I watch him being interested in my daughter’s social life and feel the tug in the middle of my chest. The one I actively avoid thinking about.
Two days later, I’m coming down the hall to check on Opal before bed, and I hear his voice from her room. I stop outside the doorway.
He’s reading to her. Not a children’s book.
In fact, I have no idea what he’s reading to her. I don’t know the language. As quietly as possible, I crack the door a fraction.
Opal sits on her bed, with Dario in a chair next to her so she can see the book. She yawns big then asks, “What’s that part?”
“The tibialis anterior. It lifts your toes up, among other functions.”
“My toes? I have that?”
He nods. “Just beneath the fascia cruris, attached to the tibia, sitting in front of the tibialis posterior.”
“That… there’s more parts in the picture.”
He begins to list them, and by the time he gets to the nervus peroneus something or other, I’m yawning too. Apparently, the magic of Latin is that it knocks Swan women out.
But the thought strikes me like a bell. He’s reading a medical textbook in Latin to my daughter, who must have asked for a story and got medical terminology in a dead language. He’s reading it with complete seriousness, as though this is exactly what the situation calls for.
By the time he turns the page, she’s out. He doesn’t stop reading.
He turns the page. Settles back in the chair. His voice stays low and even, which is the way his voice always sounds whether or not anyone’s paying attention. It’s either a character trait or a survival mechanism, and I think it’s probably both.
I lean against the doorframe and listen to him rattle on about leg anatomy—I figured out that’s the part he’s been talking about this whole time—and it’s almost hypnotic. He doesn’t leave until she’s snoring hard, and then he nearly catches me on his way out.
Back in my room, I lie on my back and look at the ceiling for a long time. Outside, the city does its city things. In the next room, Opal snores in and out in the easy rhythm of a kid who is healthyand safe and not worrying about anything, which is all I have ever wanted for her.
I never had that as a child, and I’m eternally grateful to Dario for helping me give that to her.
I stare at the ceiling. Sleep doesn’t come easily.
TWELVE
DARIO
I am completely,irrationally obsessed with Lena Swan, and I know it, and I have no plan to do anything about it.
The obsession is there in the morning when I check my phone before I’m fully awake, not for the messages I’m expecting but for the ones she sometimes sends after Opal falls asleep. I mentioned one time that people ought to write letters Civil War-style in modern times, and that it was a pity that we’ve lost the art of letter writing, settling instead for cheap communications and nothing more.
Evidently, Lena has decided to single-handedly resurrect the notion. Today, I woke up to this text.
“Dario,
It is with a most grateful & contented heart that I take up my pen this evening to write to you, for I have news of a most pleasing kind. Little Opal, who, as you know, has theretofore been of a solitary disposition upon the yard, has at last acquired her first victory, thanks to her new friend, Bea.
Bea’s mother, furthermore, does pack her a luncheon of some considerable quality. Sandwiches of a proper construction, & the superior variety of crisped potato, which Opal has remarked upon with no small degree of admiration & barely concealed envy. Again. And again. Ad nauseam.
But it is in the field of battle that their alliance has most gloriously distinguished itself. You will know the game of Hopscotch, Dario, that ancient & honorable contest of the yard. This very week past, our two girls did present themselves as a united force against the assembled opposition of the other children, and I am most proud to report that they carried the day entire. Opal herself told me of it with such fire in her eye as I have not seen since before her illness fell upon her.
The enemy was routed. Utterly & completely routed.
I do believe this Bea to be a most wholesome influence & true friend. My heart is quite full. All of this is thanks to your dedication and hard work. Thank you for providing succor and aid to bring an end to this time of despair.
Your devoted friend.”
I’m grinning by the end. When was the last time I grinned properly and not as a threat? My face hurts.
