"Mom, where's Michael?"
The plate snapped in two and I flung the pieces down and turned around, not caring that soap suds streamed down my arms. I'd been fragile and brittle and breakable just like that plate, and it was only a matter of time before I snapped in two as well. My chest was rising and falling like tsunami waves and I stood as little chance of stopping my racing heart as those violent walls of water.
"Michael is gone, Zara," I said, my anger and frustration pouring out as easily as the water from the faucet that still ran. "He left. He left you and he left me."
Zara stared up at me with wide, frightened eyes. If I had had even an hour or two of sleep over the last few days, I might have been able to see the harm I was inflicting and stop. But I was too far gone. And my own pain felt like the only pain in the world.
"That is what he does, okay? He leaves," I continued, breath ragged and out of control as my heart rate spiked. "He doesn't want to see us, Zara. He hasn't called, he hasn't anything. He's gone."
I'd always tried to hide my emotions from my daughter in order to protect her and give her a sense that everything was alright. But I'd destroyed all that in as little time as it took to throw this grenade between us.
"I tried to warn you," I shouted, my voice cracking. "I told you we were better off with just the two of us. That we were fine by ourselves. That we were all we needed. I tried to tell you what would happen, what would happen when you trust someone else, what would happen when you let someone else in, what would happen when you were weak. I tried to…"
I watched Zara's fingers tremble at the edge of her spiral notebook, and whatever else I had to say dropped from my lips unspoken. I was doing exactly what I never wanted to do to her: make her feel alone.
I took a step toward her and said softly, "Zara, I—"
Zara gathered her things in her thin arms and hurried off to her room without another word. I heard her bedroom door click shut and I sagged down in front of the kitchen sink.
"Fuck," I muttered, dragging my fingers through my hair. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
This was my fault, letting Zara get mixed up in the middle of Michael and me. In trying to make it right, I'd just managed to make it ten times worse. After catching my breath and giving Zara a few minutes alone, I went to her bedroom and knocked quietly before entering. I crossed the bedroom to where Zara sat at her little desk with her little lamp and sat at the edge of her bed.
"I'm sorry, baby," I whispered. "I'm so sorry."
Zara's pencil made little scratching noises as it moved across the page.
"I was tired and I never should have yelled at you and I'm sorry."
Zara kept on writing.
I laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Z, baby?"
When she finally turned to me, I almost wished she hadn't. Gone were the green eyes sparkling with excitement, wide to the world and all its wonders. Any light Michael had sparked within her was back behind a wall. Zara looked at me and smiled, but the smile did not reach her eyes.
"I finished my homework," she said, as if nothing at all had just happened. "I think I better get to bed for school tomorrow."
Zara pushed back her chair without another word. She walked past me without another glance and crawled into bed. Before I could say anything further, she was beneath the cover and reaching out to switch off her night light. I was plunged into a still, deep darkness there at the edge of her bed.
The creak of the mattress as I stood was the only goodnight I received from Zara's room. I shuffled tiredly down the hall to my room and flopped onto the bed without bothering to take off my makeup or change out of my clothes; I'd be up in a few hours anyway.
But as I lay there, staring like always at the ceiling, I found I couldn't stay still. I rolled out of bed and rifled through the bottom drawer of my dresser to find the camera from our trip. Cross-legged in the dark, I clicked through to the picture of us from the Four Corners.
A sob caught in my throat when I almost didn't recognise myself. The woman in the picture was open, like an endless field beneath a wide blue sky. I felt like a closed-off cave, cold and dark and enclosed. The woman in the picture had a presence, large and bright and loud. I couldn't have felt more small, dim and quiet as a mouse. The woman in the picture looked happy.
I was not happy.
After Michael left again I'd convinced myself that safe was more important than happy, protected was more important than joyful, secluded was more important than exposed. I thought I'd been right—right for me, right for Zara.
But I wasn't the only one I hardly recognised in the picture. Zara was different, too.
I cried for the first time in weeks. I cried because I couldn't stop it, because it was overwhelming, because I was hurt and confused and afraid I was being a terrible mother. And I didn't know what to do.
Zara was closed off because I was closed off. But I didn't know how to open up, to share with her, to bare my scared and freshly bleeding heart. I wasn't sure I was brave enough.
And the one man who made me feel brave enough was never coming back.
Michael
My
