Chapter 2 - The Answer He Could Never Give
Alexander Hayes had negotiated with men who smiled while threatening to destroy him. He had watched a shipping terminal burn and rebuilt it before the insurance company finished its investigation. He had sat across from federal prosecutors without letting his hands shake.
But in the lobby of a Toronto publishing house, holding a blue notebook made by a five-year-old girl, he could not remember how to breathe.
Daddy, will you come too?
The question sat on the page beneath a red airplane. Grace had drawn four windows and three stick figures. One figure stood outside the plane. He recognized himself by the square black briefcase she had added to his hand.
“I didn't know she was going to ask you that day,” Emily said.
Alexander kept looking at the picture. “Did she think I would say no?”
“I think she was afraid you wouldn't hear the question.”
He wanted to say that he would have gone anywhere for his daughter. The words formed and died before reaching his mouth. Grace had asked him to attend her school performance, and he had sent flowers. She had asked him to help make a paper moon for a classroom project, and he had ordered a professional craft kit. When she asked him to come to the park, he told her Saturday. There was always another Saturday until there wasn't.
Emily glanced at the wall clock. “I have to go.”
“May I keep the notebook?”
She considered him for a moment. “Yes. It's yours. But please don't turn it into proof that you were a terrible father. She made it because she loved you.”
“I don't know how to remember both things.”
“Neither do I.”
That was the first honest thing they had shared without one of them trying to rescue the other from it.
Alexander stepped aside. Emily walked through the glass doors into the cold afternoon, leaving him with the sound of the revolving door and the weight of an unanswered question.
He did not follow.
Instead, he went to the small café across the street, ordered coffee he couldn't drink, and opened the notebook again. On the back cover, Grace had pressed a yellow star sticker crookedly over a purple heart. He touched it with one finger.
His phone lit up with twelve missed calls from Chicago. Daniel had sent a summary of an urgent board meeting. Olivia had left three messages. His mother had written, Come home. We need to put this unfortunate situation behind us.
He stared at the last sentence until it blurred.
Behind us.
As if Grace's death were a public-relations problem. As if Emily's departure were an embarrassing headline that could be replaced by a more favorable one.
He called Daniel.
“Cancel my return flight,” he said.
“For how long?”
“I don't know.”
A silence. “Your mother is asking whether you're with Emily.”
“Tell her Emily's location isn't hers to discuss.”
“And Olivia?”
“Tell Olivia not to contact my wife. I'll speak to her myself.”
“Understood.”
“Daniel, find Grace's preschool teacher. I want to ask about the notebook. Don't pressure her. Ask if she'd be comfortable speaking with me.”
“Of course.”
Alexander ended the call and, for once, did not immediately issue another instruction.
Across the street, Emily paused at a pedestrian crossing. A woman in a red coat said something to her, and Emily gave a faint smile. Alexander watched without moving. He had once mistaken her smile for a permanent feature of his life, like the Chicago skyline outside their bedroom. Now it was something she offered the world when she chose.
At six that evening, he received a message from an unfamiliar number.
This is Sophie. Emily asked me to tell you that she got home safely. She also asked that you not come by tonight.
He typed, Thank you. I won't.
He meant it.
An hour later, someone knocked on his hotel-room door. A courier handed him an envelope from Chicago. Inside was a photograph of Grace's yellow sweater, neatly folded, and a note from Madison.
I found the drawing you thought you lost. It was in the inside pocket of your navy suit. I'm sending it separately because I thought you'd want to hold it.
The next morning, the drawing arrived in a stiff cardboard mailer. Alexander placed it beside the notebook. In the picture, Grace had drawn a blue house with a green door. Above the three figures she had written, with an adult's help, EVERYBODY HOME.
He sat on the floor, his back against the hotel bed, and wept without calling anyone to witness it.
Later that afternoon, Grace's teacher agreed to a video call. Mrs. Carter was a silver-haired woman with kind eyes and a voice that made Alexander think of the classroom he had visited only twice.
“She was proud of that notebook,” Mrs. Carter said. “She worked on it during our family week.”
“Did she talk about me?”
“All the time. She said you knew how to make ships cross oceans.”
He smiled painfully. “I told her that once.”
“She also said you were very busy. When the children drew their favorite family activities, she drew a calendar.”
“A calendar?”
“She told me she wanted to find a day with nothing written on it.”
Alexander lowered his head.
Mrs. Carter let the silence remain. Then she said, “Mr. Hayes, children can love us completely and still need more from us. Those things aren't opposites.”
He thanked her. After the call, he opened his calendar. It was packed with color-coded meetings, international flights, conference calls, private dinners, and obligations he had once considered indispensable.
He deleted nothing. Not yet. Instead, he looked at each appointment and asked whether he had ever been as important to the people waiting for him as he had imagined.
That night, Emily called.
He answered on the first ring, then regretted how desperate he must have sounded.
“Alexander?”
“I'm here.”
“I heard you spoke to Mrs. Carter.”
“Yes. I hope that was all right.”
“It was.” A pause. “She called me afterward. She said you listened.”
“I tried.”
“I wanted to ask something.”
“Anything.”
“Did you ever tell Grace you were proud of her?”
The question struck him harder than he expected.
“Yes,” he said. “I did. The night she learned to ride her bicycle. I told her she was the bravest girl I'd ever met.”
Emily made a small sound, half laugh and half sob. “She told everyone that. For weeks.”
He shut his eyes and saw Grace wobbling down the driveway, her helmet too large, her face shining with triumph.
“I remember,” he whispered.
“Good,” Emily said. “I need us to remember good things too.”
They stayed on the phone for several minutes, trading small memories: the way Grace pronounced spaghetti, the stuffed rabbit she insisted had allergies, the night she demanded pancakes for dinner because breakfast deserved a second chance.
Then Emily's voice changed.
“Alexander, I have an appointment with a grief counselor tomorrow. I've been trying to get help since the accident. I think you should talk to someone too.”
“I will.”
“Not because you think it will bring me back.”
“I understand.”
“I hope you do.”
Before hanging up, she added, “There's something else. Grace's accident report is being reviewed by the school district. They found an inconsistency in the pickup records.”
Alexander sat upright. “What inconsistency?”
“I don't know yet. They called this morning.”
“Why didn't you tell me earlier?”
“Because I was afraid you would turn it into a war before I even understood what happened.”
He looked at the little blue notebook on the table.
“Then we'll understand first,” he said. “And we won't do anything until we've heard the facts.”
Emily was quiet for so long he thought the call had dropped.
Finally she said, “That's the first answer you've given me in years that makes me feel less alone.”
When the line went dead, Alexander sat in the dark with the notebook open in his lap.
May you like
For the first time since Grace died, he understood that the question he had to answer was not whether Emily would come home.
It was whether he could become a man who knew how to stay.
