Ghosted

Maddie has no idea.

She sits at the kitchen table, surrounded by crayons, making a card for her Aunt Meghan—it’s her birthday tomorrow. Swinging her legs, she hums to herself, oblivious at the moment.

“Mommy, how old is Aunt Meghan gonna be now?” she asks, as I stand at the sink washing dishes... scrubbing the same glass for the past ten minutes.

“Thirty,” I say.

“Whoa,” Maddie says before mumbling, “That’s a lot.”

I turn, glaring at her for that. I’m not far off from thirty. I don’t say anything, though, because my eyes catch sight of Jonathan as he steps into the kitchen, carrying his bag.

Maddie looks up, hearing his footsteps. Her legs stop swinging. She blinks at him with confusion before asking, “Are we going away?”

He doesn’t answer right away. He freezes, so she looks at me, like she trusts that I’ll tell her since he isn’t.

“No, sweetheart, we’re not going away,” I say, wanting to shake some sense into him, because silence isn’t going to help. “But your daddy is.”

“Daddy is what?” she asks, and I know she already knows the answer, because she clutches her crayon so hard it snaps.

“Going to work,” he says, finally chiming in. “I have to finish making the movie, so I have to go away for a little while.”

“How much is a little while?” she asks. “'Till tomorrow?”

“Longer than that,” he says.

“The one that’s after that?” she asked. “Will you be back on that day?”

“Uh, no,” he says. “It’ll take about a month.”

“A month?” She gasps, looking at me again when she asks, “How many days is that?”

“About thirty,” I tell her.

I see it, the panic that flows through her. That’s a lot of days for such a little girl. She frantically shakes her head, throwing her crayon down. “No, that’s too many! I don’t want you to do that!”

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan says, but ‘sorry’ isn’t what she wants to hear, so it does nothing but upset her more.

Shoving out of her chair, getting to her feet, she shakes her head again as she rushes toward him, grabbing his bag. She yanks on it hard, trying to rip it out of his hand. “No, don’t go! I want you to stay!”

“I know you do,” he says, “I want to stay, too, but I have to be Breezeo, remember?”

“I don’t care!” she says, digging in her heels, pulling the bag so hard that he loosens his hold, surrendering it. She almost falls, but he catches her. The bag drops to the floor, and she tries to kick it away. It doesn’t move, so she shoves him, wanting to put distance between him and that bag. “You don’t gotta be Breezeo! You can just be Daddy, and it’ll be okay! It’s gonna be Aunt Meghan’s birthday, and you can walk me to school, and we have to do the lines together so I can practice, ‘cuz I’m gonna be a snowflake! And how can I be a snowflake if you don’t stay?”

Her voice cracks as tears fill her eyes. She’s still shoving against him, trying to get him to move, but he’s not budging.

She’s getting furious.

Sighing, he bends down to her level, gently grasping her arms when she angrily tries to shove his face away from hers.

I want so much to intervene. I want to grab her, and hold her, and make it all go away, but I can’t. So I just stand against the counter, trying to keep myself together, because me falling apart isn’t going to help anyone right now.

“You can still be a snowflake,” he says. “You’re going to be the best snowflake ever.”

“But how will you know?” she asks, the first tears starting to fall. “Will you still come see?”

“Of course,” he says. “Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“You promise?”

I inhale sharply, but he doesn’t miss a beat.

“I promise,” he whispers, wiping her cheeks. “I’ll be back for it. It’s just that, right now, the movie needs me to be Breezeo.”

“But I need you to be my daddy,” she says.

“I’ll still be your daddy, even when I’m Breezeo.”

“No, you won’t!” she yells. “You’re gonna go away, and then you won’t be here no more, and it’ll be just like before!”

“It won’t be like before,” he tells her.

“It will! You didn’t wanna be my daddy then, and now you don’t wanna again! You wanna go away and you’re not gonna live here no more, ‘cuz you have all your stuff and it’s gonna be gone and you won’t be here to tell Mommy she’s pretty so now she can’t never love you!”

Whoa. She blurts all that out in one frantic breath before shoving past him and running off, her bedroom door slamming.

A strangled silence sweeps through the room in her absence before Jonathan slowly stands and says, “I probably deserve that.”

Frowning, I shove away from the counter, stopping him before he can go after her. “Let me talk to her.”