Tumble (Dogwood Lane 1)

“No,” she says, the words padded with unshed tears. “She has to come back, Daddy. We have the Manicure Day.”

“And she really wanted to do that with you,” I tell her. “I know she did. She was really looking forward to it. But her boss called and needed her back soon, so she had to go.”

A solitary tear trickles down her freckled face. “She didn’t say goodbye?”

“She didn’t have time, baby girl. She told me to tell you she would miss you and she hated going, but she had to. She didn’t have a choice.”

I grip a handful of sheets and squeeze it with everything I have. Sitting here and answering her questions, lying to her, breaks my heart. I fight back tears of my own, both from watching her pain and acknowledging my own.

“Can’t you go get her?” Mia asks.

“I can’t. It’s not my place.”

“Why isn’t it? You’d go find me if I ran away, wouldn’t you?”

I take a deep breath. “I would find you in a second because you’re my child. It’s my job to find you.”

“Well, Neely is our family. Doesn’t that mean it’s our job to find her?”

“I know you love her. Heck, I do too,” I admit. “But she’s not really our family. It doesn’t work the same.”

Mia sits up in bed. Her pajamas, a gift from Haley decorated with little girls doing various gymnastics events, remind me of Neely too.

“But she is our family,” Mia insists. “I feel it in my heart.”

I give up. Batting back tears, I watch her eyes fill with her own. I want to tell her I feel it too. That I love her unlike any way I’ve loved someone before. That if I could go to New York and throw her over my shoulder like a caveman and carry her home, I would.

“You should find her, Daddy. Please.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Yes, it does,” she insists, her voice beginning to break. “If you love somebody, you look for them. You look and look and look until you find them. And I know you love her just like she loves you.”

My nose burns as I fight my emotions from getting the best of me. Instead, I pull Mia into my arms. She climbs on my lap and puts her arms around my neck. Her tears dampen my T-shirt, and I just want to hit a button and rewind some of this crap. Make it not happen. Unbreak our hearts.

I hold her like I used to, back when I had to walk her from the bathroom every night. Seeing my strong, sassy preteen hurting like this, so unsure, rips at the fibers of my soul.

“Madison ran away,” she sniffles. “She hid in the doghouse outside because her brother was being mean to her.”

“Running away is never good. You always talk to me if you have a problem. Got it?”

She nods. “Madison said she just wanted her brother to find her. That’s why she hid where she did, because she knew if he looked he’d find her there. He said he hated her and wished she wasn’t alive. It hurt Madison’s feelings. So maybe this is Neely’s way of doing that. Maybe we hurt her feelings.”

“No.” I pull her back so I can look her in the face. “We didn’t hurt her feelings. Her leaving isn’t about that.” I want to shake her, drive this point into her so deep she doesn’t forget it. “This has nothing to do with you. Nothing.”

I exhale, the weight of our world embedded in the sound. I hold Mia tight, as though if I squeeze her enough, it’ll put our hearts back together again.

We sit in the silence for a while, each of us lost in thought. I don’t know how to replace Neely in our lives. Certainly not with another woman. But there is a void that I don’t know how to fill, and I know Mia feels it too.

“Are you sad, Dad?”

“Yeah,” I say, my voice husky. “I’m pretty sad.”

“How sad are you?”

“I don’t know.” I chuckle. “How do you measure how sad you are?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever been this sad before.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I kick myself for opening us up to this. Was it worth it? Were a few days of fun worth this?

“I liked having her here,” she says. “I liked knowing she was downstairs with you when I went to sleep. It felt like you were happy then. Like I didn’t need to worry about you anymore because she was worrying too.”

“You don’t have to worry about me, Mia. I’m a grown-up.”

“Sometimes you have to worry about grown-ups too. You clearly don’t have it all figured out.”

My chest shakes as I laugh. I pull Mia closer. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

She pries herself from my arms and crawls across her bed. Sitting with her knees pulled to her chest, she wrinkles her nose. “If it helps, I’m not as sad as you,” she says.