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Fine, she muttered. Take your parental guilt trips and get out of my room. I need to take a shower. My mouth tastes like ass.
Funny, your father says the same thing after he—
David Greengrass!
Oh my God, Dad! Get out of my room!
And that was the beginning of their day.
They’d had breakfast and then taken her shopping and spent far too much money on whatever she wanted. A phone. A Coach purse. Shoes. Clothes. Makeup. She got her hair done and her nails done, and it’d been just the three of them, two dads and their daughter, and as they were walking together, Alice between the two of them, her arms through theirs, she told them that she felt like a princess, and that today had been a very good day.
When she leaned up and kissed both of them on the cheek, she said, I love you guys.
And if she decided she didn’t want to go out that night again, no one said a thing. Instead, she decided to put her new clothes away and put on sweats, and they were in the kitchen, eating pizza. She was sitting on the counter, her socked feet dangling toward the floor. She had a devilish smile on her face as she told her papa that she was a woman now, and that if she wanted to stay at a boy’s house overnight, she would, and that was when David had taken the picture. That last picture. Of her soft and safe and happy, wearing a sweatshirt that said she was a DIVA, her pink socks on her little feet, her beautiful hair in an afro, makeup-free and alive and alive and alive, and that was what David remembered. That was what he remembered from that day, that she had been alive and whole and theirs, she was theirs, and when he lowered the camera after taking the photo, he had to swallow past the strange lump in his throat.
Daddy? she asked, a concerned look on her face.
He nodded, unable to speak and unsure as to why.
Phillip smiled softly at him. Your father is just an old sap.
She hopped off the counter and walked toward him, and David looked away, trying to find some way to wipe his eyes without her seeing, but then she stood above him, and he had no choice. He scrubbed his hand over his face and coughed, trying to cover it up as best he could. But these were the two people who knew him best, these were the two people who loved him the most.
These were the two people he’d never fool.
Oh, Daddy, she said, leaning forward. He closed his eyes as she kissed his forehead. Don’t cry. It’s all right. Everything is all right. I’m not going anywhere, okay?
And oh, the lie that had been.
That was the last photo on the wall. Not of her sitting on the counter that David had taken where she’d looked all soft and safe. No. This photo was the one that Phillip had taken of the two of them when she’d kissed his forehead.
That was the last known photo of her, hanging on their wall.
Sixteen days later, it was March 22, 2012.
Six years later, it was what they had left.
That moment.
And then they were past it, at the top of the stairs, and Phillip pulled him down the hall. There was the bathroom on the right, a guest room on the left, then her bathroom and her bedroom, the doors closed, and David thought, No, please no, don’t make me go in there, please don’t make me go in there right now. Because when he’d left, it’d still been a shrine, however unhealthy that’d been. They’d kept the room the same as the day she left it, ready and waiting for the day she finally came home. Every year, they’d bought Christmas presents and birthday presents, stacking them against the far wall. There would be such a party when she came back, they’d whispered to each other in the middle of the night when neither of them could sleep. There would be such a party, with streamers and cake and balloons that said WELCOME HOME and WE MISSED YOU and YOU’RE SAFE YOU’RE SAFE YOU’RE SAFE. Alice would smile and laugh, they’d whispered, and she would clap her hands and do that funny little shimmy she did when she got really excited, like her whole body was the happiest it’d ever been.
Then they’d go through years of gifts, telling the stories of each (this is the scarf I bought you in 2014, and I cried in the middle of the department store, this is the journal I bought for you in 2013, knowing that when you came home, you would have a story to tell) and at the end, when the party was winding down, everything getting quieter, hazier, they would be on the couch, friends milling around the periphery. David and Phillip would be watching her as she approached, and she would be filled with so much life that it would take their breaths away. She’d put her foot between them and wiggle it back and forth just like she always had, and they would make room just for her, because she was the only one who could get between them like this, the only one they would make room for.
And then she’d sit between them, and she’d lay her head on her daddy’s chest, and she’d be clutching her papa’s hand, and she’d yawn, jaw cracking. Then she’d say, “Thank you for my presents, you silly guys. I love you.”
That’s what they’d whispered to each other in their bed late at night, their daughter’s bedroom down the hall, slowly being filled with all the gifts for all the celebrations she had missed.
So, no. He couldn’t go in there. Not now.
Especially considering the little hall closet he had back in his shitty apartment, filled with all the presents he’d bought for her since Phillip kicked him out.
He just couldn’t do it right now.
He wasn’t even sure why he was here.
But Phillip didn’t open her door.
In fact, he passed it right on by with only the slightest of hesitations.
