"Thanks for bringing her home," was my only response.
Sandra's smile was small and hesitant before she nodded, gathered her things, and slipped out of the front door. I walked to Zara's bedroom with salt-rimmed eyes and a mechanically beating heart. I rapped my knuckles on the cracked door before stepping inside.
The room was lit a hazy yellow by her nightlight. Zara was in her bed, hidden under the covers with a flashlight and surely a book. I sat on the edge of her bed and waited for her to peek her head from beneath the covers.
"Zara?"
When she remained silent and hidden, I finally lifted the covers and slipped beneath them myself. Her green eyes, those betraying green eyes, were focused on a glossy image of the Grand Canyon in her book.
"Zara," I said with a slow sigh, "Z, that man is your—"
"My father?"
I swallowed heavily and nodded. "Yes."
"What's his name?"
Zara lifted those beautiful green eyes to me, at once lovely and painful. Sandra said to be honest, that that was all that mattered. But I wasn't so sure. My daughter didn't need a full picture of Michael; that would simply make forgetting him harder.
"That doesn't matter," I said. "He's not a part of our lives."
I reached out to brush a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear, but she flinched away from my touch.
"I just want to know his name," she said.
"Z, baby, he's no one, alright?" I insisted. "I just want you to forget that you saw him here tonight. It will be easier."
"He has the same colour eyes as me." Zara’s eyes searched mine.
I forced a smile. "No one could possibly have eyes as green as yours, baby."
Zara looked at me for a moment longer and then returned her attention to her book.
"You're alright, right?" I asked her. "We're just going to forget about tonight?"
Zara nodded.
"Yeah?" I pressed.
Zara didn't look up at me as she said, "Yeah, Mom."
"You're okay?" I asked, hesitating before leaving.
"I'm fine."
I pressed a kiss to my daughter's forehead and slipped from beneath the covers. This was for the best, I told myself. This was for her own good. She didn't know what kind of pain lay in those green eyes so much like her own.
I lingered in the doorway, glancing back at the faint light of her flashlight beneath the covers. I told myself I was protecting the gentle flame in her heart from the battering winds of the world. With my hands cupped around that little flicker it couldn't grow, it couldn't rise, it couldn't catch the wild grasses and fly.
But it also wouldn't die.
I couldn't let it die, I told myself, trying to reassure myself that I was making the right decision in erecting a wall between my daughter and her father. It was hard now, but she would forget, she would move on, she would be safe.
"Goodnight, baby," I said in the doorway.
Zara did not reply. All I heard was the flipping of a page beneath the covers. I sighed and closed the door gently behind me.
I slept on the couch that night because I wasn't yet ready to face that bed where I'd made the worst decision of my life.
Michael
I walked till blisters formed at the back of my heel, on the bottom of my foot, at the sides of my toes. I walked till there was a hole in each sock. I walked till the craggy peaks of the distant mountains, visible in each intersection I passed, were outlined with a faint ribbon of pale yellow light. I walked and I walked and I walked and I put miles between myself and Abbi and the little girl with green eyes. The little girl I would not let myself call my daughter.
And yet miles weren’t enough.
I needed to put more distance between me and this sudden truth, if I had any chance at all of outrunning it.
Once I returned to my penthouse in the early morning, my body was weary, limbs shaking with fatigue, eyes heavy and stinging, but I did not allow myself to sit even for a moment. If I allowed myself to sit, I might think about the consequences of what I'd seen in Abbi's apartment. If I rested my body for just a moment, my mind might take over. If I stopped, I would see her again and I feared I wouldn't be able to move.
I shifted through my penthouse like a sleeping shark—in motion, but with blank, empty black eyes. I texted Caroline back in Dublin:
Get me on the first flight out of Denver.
I slipped my cell phone into my pocket and I retrieved my suitcase from beneath the bed. I packed my shirts with the utmost care and diligence and focus. If I focused on folding perfectly along a seam, I wasn't focused on the question Abbi answered without a word. If I concentrated on preventing wrinkles in fine linen, I couldn't concentrate on the years I'd lived without knowing I had a daughter. If I could devote myself to my career, my success, my accolades, my cars, my art, my loft, my clothes, my watches, my vacations to remote islands, my shiny plaque displaying my name and title outside my office, perhaps I could prevent her from entering my mind for the rest of my life.
If I kept going, if I kept focused, if I didn't stop, I could believe this. I could.
Caroline's text made my cell phone buzz in my pocket.
Caroline: To Dublin?
Me: First flight out is all that matters. I don't care to where. I'll be at the airport in an hour.
In the luxurious, spacious bathroom, I was careful not to glance at
