Page 3 of Unlikely
Not wanting to argue, I nudge Raine. “Do you think you can braid my hair?” I ask her, offering an olive branch.
She offers me a soft, sad smile and leads me to the couch. She runs to the bathroom and grabs a comb and some elastic bands before sitting down and gesturing for me to sit on the floor between her legs.
“I think I’ve mastered a fish braid,” she says. “Can I try it on you?”
“Sure.”
We sit together in the quiet, all three of us, sharing the same air, sharing the same heartache, the same grief. Raine combs my wet hair and starts sectioning it into pieces, tugging and weaving strands to create the perfect style, and my eyes never leave Jesse.
There’s no way he’s not broken inside. I know him as well as I know myself, but I sure am jealous of the way he always manages to put himself together for everybody else.
I want his strength more than I want my next breath.
He glances up and catches me looking at him. His smile is so sad, it actually hurts to look at. “Please go home to Leo,” I say again. “We can finish the rest.”
Raine pipes in. “I can finish the rest, Dad. Thank you for coming.”
His lips tip up ever so slightly, and I have no doubt he’s looking at Raine right now and thinking of Lola. Everything he has with one daughter and everything he won’t have with the other.
“Okay,” he says, nodding. “Just call if you need me.”
I know he’s really talking to Raine, knowing the last thing I’ll do is call him. And I know my daughter well enough to know she’s giving him a subtle nod, a secret between the two of them.
I let them have it, determined that this will be the one and only time either of them will see me so vulnerable.
Jesse washes his hands and walks over to us. He kisses us both on the forehead, and we both watch him head to the front door and wave goodbye before he opens it and steps over the threshold.
The sound of the door closing echoes through the house, heightening the silence between Raine and me. She finishes off the braid and we both sit here, her hands resting on my shoulders, a sliver of awkwardness between us that’s never been there before, an awkwardness that I need to erase. But before I can find the words, Raine says, “Mom, I’m sorry.”
“Hey,” I say a little too firmly, standing as quickly as I can and turning to face her. Extending my arm, she takes my hand and I pull her up off the couch, guilt consuming me that I didn’t do a better job of hiding my heartache. “You donotneed to apologize for a single thing.”
“I just…” Her breath hitches, and I see the unshed tears pooling in her eyes. Her pain and devastation, splitting me right in two. She tries to turn away, but I place my hands on either side of her face, forcing her to look at me.
“You don’t need to hide your feelings from me,” I tell her. “Especially not now. I’m sorry I put you in an uncomfortable situation. I’m sorry that for a single second I made you worry about me.”
The stoic facade she inherited from her father cracks, the carefully placed mask slipping, her grief as obvious and prominent as mine. Tears spill, streaming down her face, her shoulders shaking.
My thumbs skim across her cheeks, trying to soothe her. I want to tell her it’ll all be okay and this too shall pass. I want to reassure her with asinine clichés that for some reason make us feel better, even though, right now, not a single one of them holds true.
Because it won’t be okay.
And it won’t pass.
Time won’t heal.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her close to me. “You cry for as long as you need, you hear me.”
I don’t know if she was waiting for permission or just needed to know I would be here to catch her when she falls. Her body rattles against mine as she struggles to find her breath through the onslaught of tears; her sadness and grief, palpable and painful.
This is why I need to do better. She is the reason I need to get out of bed every morning.
My body will heal, the hormones will level out, and the additional stretch marks—old ones lined up right next to the new—will remind me that a woman is capable of many things, but putting my needs above my daughter’s isn’t one of them.
Not even for a single second. A mother knows better…Iknow better.
It doesn’t matter how hard it is or how much it hurts or that I, too, loved and lost.
It doesn’t matter that grief will forever be a permanent fixture in our lives or how all of our hearts will have the same Lola-shaped hole for as long as we live.