Too Late, My Ex-Wife: Her Regret After Our Daughter's Death

Chapter 3: The Drawing

Nathan's POV:

Vivienne's expression shifted the moment I said it.

"Divorce." She set her bag down slowly, like the word itself had weight she needed to put somewhere. "You are doing this to force me away from Roman. That is what this is, isn't it."

"No."

She waited for the rest of the sentence. I did not give her one.

"Then what, Nathan. What exactly is this?"

I looked at her. My knuckles were still sore from the banquet.

The doctor's printed sheet was still folded in my jacket pocket from the day before, soft at the creases already.

I had spent the whole drive home and every hour since trying to find a way to say this that did not sound like a threat. There wasn't one.

"I am done," I said. "I have been done for a while now. But I will wait until after Lily's birthday before we make it official. Stay with her until then. Be present. That is the only thing she has ever asked for. Show up for her. After the birthday, I will sign everything the same day. No argument. Nothing."

She stared at me like she was waiting for the trick to surface.

Something moved behind her eyes that she did not mean for me to see. She had walked into this conversation already armed with the right comebacks for a different fight, and this was not that fight.

Her chin lifted slightly. "I was always going to be at her birthday. You did not need to threaten me with divorce papers to make that happen."

"Then keep your word," I said. "That is all I am asking."

She picked up her bag and walked toward the bedroom without answering. At the doorway she stopped, her back still to me.

"Go to sleep, Nathan."

The door clicked shut.

I sat back down in the dark and didn't move.

~.~

I lost track of how long I sat there. The kitchen light stayed on. A car passed slowly outside, then it was quiet again, the kind of quiet that has weight to it.

Then Lily's door opened.

She came down the hallway in her pajamas, hair pressed flat on one side, blinking against the light. She glanced toward the kitchen, saw Vivienne's bag sitting on the counter, and went completely still.

Two seconds. Maybe three.

Then she ran.

"Mommy!"

Vivienne came out of the bedroom and caught her, one arm wrapping around her back, and Lily held on with everything she had. Both arms. Face buried against her shoulder, the way she clung to people when she'd been scared and didn't want anyone to know it.

"I missed you," she said. "I missed you so much."

Vivienne's hand moved slowly up and down her back. Her eyes found mine over Lily's head for one second. I looked down at the table.

After a moment, Lily pulled back, suddenly urgent about something. "Wait. I made you something. I've had it for a long time." She ran to her room and came back holding a folded piece of paper, the creases gone soft from being opened and refolded so many times.

She held it out with both hands.

Vivienne unfolded it.

Three crayon figures standing in front of a house, all holding hands. The smallest one had a gap drawn into her smile where her front tooth was missing. Above the house, a sun with a face. And off to the side, slightly apart from the three figures, a small orange cat.

We had never had a cat.

"I put the cat there because I thought it would make it look more like a home," Lily said, very seriously. "I hope we can stay together forever. The three of us."

Something passed over Vivienne's face. Quick. Complicated. She folded the drawing carefully and set it on the counter.

"Thank you, baby," she said.

Lily smiled like she'd just been handed the whole world.

~.~

Breakfast was loud the way it only got when Lily decided a moment was worth filling completely. Her teacher had said something funny on Monday she'd been saving up to tell us. There was a girl in her class whose lunchbox was shaped like a watermelon. There was a bird near the school gate she was convinced had been following her, for reasons she had not yet worked out and refused to let go of.

Vivienne listened. She laughed twice, and both times Lily's whole face lit up like a switch had been thrown.

I watched and didn't say much.

After breakfast Lily came back in her yellow dress, the one with the small white buttons she'd picked out herself. She stayed within arm's reach of Vivienne for the rest of the morning, moving when Vivienne moved, like some part of her already knew that the second she stopped paying attention, her mother would find a reason to leave.

She wasn't wrong to think that. Three weeks earlier her teacher had pulled me aside at pickup. Some of the other kids had been saying things. That Lily's mum never came. That she must have done something to deserve it. She'd been carrying that around without telling either of us.

When she asked Vivienne, very carefully, if they could all three walk her to school just this once, Vivienne said yes.

Lily ran to grab her backpack before the answer could change its mind.

We stood at the front door together. Lily had one hand in mine, one in Vivienne's. Yellow dress. Backpack. That gap-toothed grin she got when something turned out exactly the way she'd hoped.

Then Vivienne's phone rang.

I felt her hand shift before I even saw her check the screen.

"I have to take this," she said, stepping back.

I stood at the door with Lily and waited. She watched the kitchen doorway and gripped my hand a little tighter.

Two minutes later Vivienne came back, eyes sliding just past us instead of meeting them. "Something came up. Roman's son had a stomach episode and Roman doesn't know the area. I need to go." She picked up her bag. "Nathan can take you. It's the same thing."

Lily didn't move. Her lips pressed together slowly. Her eyes went very bright.

I stepped forward. "Vivienne. You promised her this morning. She's been holding your hand for two hours because she was scared exactly this would happen."

"A child is sick."

"So is ours."

"Roman's son has a stomachache," I said. "Our daughter is dying. Tell me which one needs you more right now."

"Stop turning this into something it isn't. It's the school run. You can do it."

She stepped around me and opened the door.

"I'll make it up to her," she said. And then she was gone.

I stood in the open doorway a moment, then closed it and turned around.

Lily hadn't moved. Yellow dress. Both hands gripping her backpack straps. Her chin trembled and her eyes were full, lips pressed together so hard they'd gone white at the edges.

"Daddy." Her voice came out tiny. "Is it because I'm not good enough? She's already so busy. I shouldn't have asked her. I just made everything harder."

I crouched down and took both her hands in mine.

"Lily. You did nothing wrong. None of this is your fault. Not one single part of it. Do you hear me?"

She nodded slowly. Trying to believe it.

Then her face changed, and her knees folded, and I caught her on the way down, one arm around her back, her weight collapsing against my chest.

She coughed once, hard, the kind that came from somewhere deep and wrong, and when I pulled back there was blood on her mouth.

My whole body went cold.

"Lily."

She didn't answer.