Chapter 3
Dad didn't put me down right away. He carried me back to the black sofa and sat with me in his lap, his white shirt wrinkled where I'd pressed against him. The apartment felt too quiet after all that crying. The city lights outside the big windows buzzed without making a sound, and the air conditioner hummed low.
He rubbed my back in slow circles and tried to breathe steady so I would too.
"Hey, kiddo," he whispered. "It's okay. I've got you."
I couldn't stop shaking. I had both halves of the book clamped to my chest, the torn edges digging into my palms. My face was wet and my throat hurt.
After a minute he glanced toward the bookshelf, like he was looking for something to fix it with. "We can get you a new one," he said softly. "A brand new book, any one you want. Tomorrow we'll go to the bookstore and you can pick it."
I shook my head. I didn't want a new one. I held the torn halves tighter, pulling them in until my knuckles turned white. It wasn't any book. It was this one. The light blue cover with the white clouds and the little cartoon trees felt familiar under my fingers even torn.
He saw that. His hand stopped on my back. "Okay," he said. "Okay, not a new one. We keep this one."
I slipped down from his lap onto the sofa cushion. Dad let me go. I took both pieces and lifted the arm of the sofa pillow, the heavy one at the end. I tucked them underneath, side by side, and pressed the pillow down flat. Then I lifted it again just to check. Both halves were still there, not lost, not taken. The blue cover was face up on one piece, the back cover on the other.
Dad watched me do it twice. He didn't say anything about it being strange. He just watched my hands.
He picked up one half carefully when I let him, just the front. He turned it over in his hands. The cover was light blue with soft white clouds and that little scene with the green trees and the colorful cartoon kids. The paper was thick, the kind for little kids, a little bent at the corner where I'd held it too much. He ran his thumb along the torn edge where the fibers stuck out.
I thought he'd say it was just paper. He didn't.
"This is an old one, isn't it?" he said quietly, more to himself than to me. He looked at the illustration again, closer. His expression changed, his eyebrows pulling together just a little. He realized it wasn't something you could reorder and have it be the same. Something about the cover made him pause, like he was trying to remember where he'd seen it before and why it mattered.
He set it back down gently next to my pillow. "We'll tape it," he said. "We'll fix it so you can hold it again."
I nodded, but I didn't take my hand off the pillow. I kept my palm flat on top of it, feeling the lump of the book underneath.
The bedroom door opened.
Vanessa came out in her beige blouse and trousers, her dark hair still perfect. She didn't look at me. She walked past the sofa toward the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the wood floor. The fridge light came on and I heard water pour into a glass.
Dad went still beside me. His shoulders tightened under his white shirt. He looked at her, and she looked back at him over the rim of the glass. No one spoke. Her mouth was a straight line, her eyes flat and cool. Dad's jaw moved once, like he was about to say something and decided not to. He gave a tiny, sharp shake of his head. She held his stare for a second, then looked away first, setting the glass in the sink with a soft click.
She walked back to the bedroom without a sound and closed the door again. Not slammed. Closed.
The apartment was quiet again, only the city lights and the refrigerator humming.
Dad let out a breath he'd been holding. He shifted closer to me and pulled the soft throw from the back of the sofa over my shoulders.
"You sleep here with me tonight," he said. "Right here, okay?"
I curled on my side, my hand still tucked under the pillow, fingers touching the edge of the torn book. My eyes were heavy but I didn't want to close them. Every time I blinked I made sure the pillow was still there.
May you like
Dad stayed awake. He sat against the arm of the sofa with his legs stretched out, his hand resting lightly on my back, not moving. I could feel him looking at the pillow, at the blue cover peeking out, and at the closed bedroom door, his breathing slow and uneven. He wasn't trying to fix it anymore with words about a new book. He was just sitting with it, realizing there was something about that little book I hadn't told him yet, something he needed to figure out.
After a long time my eyes closed on their own. I fell asleep holding on, and he stayed awake watching over us.
