Chapter 8 - The Return
The drive back took an hour instead of forty-five minutes.
The snow had stopped, leaving the fields flat and white under a pale moon that looked like a thumbprint on blue paper. In the back seat, Lily was fast asleep, her breathing deep and regular, her tiny chest rising and falling beneath the reindeer blanket.
On the passenger seat beside me sat the cardboard box with the yellow bonnet and the silver rattle. On top of it lay the set of clean sleepers my mother had repacked into the diaper bag before we left, making sure the zippers were all pulled up to the top.
When I pulled into the driveway of our apartment building, the snow was piled two feet high against the curb where the plow had gone through.
I turned off the engine. The dashboard lights faded, one by one, until the car was dark except for the amber glow of the streetlamp outside the window.
My phone buzzed in my coat pocket.
I pulled it out. It was a text from an unknown number—or rather, a number I hadn't saved in three years.
Did you get home safe?
It was my father.
I stared at the screen for a long time, the cold air leaking through the rubber seal of the passenger door, smelling of pine smoke and wet wool.
I tapped out three letters.
Yes. Thanks, Dad.
Before I could lock the screen, a second message came through.
Come back for Sunday dinner. Helen’s making pot roast. She bought the good potatoes.
I looked back at the house through the frosted windshield—dark, quiet, ordinary. Then I looked in the rearview mirror at the small, dark mound of the car seat where Lily was sleeping through the cold, the dark, and the silence.
May you like
"We’ll go," I whispered to the glass.
I picked up the cardboard box, tucked it under my arm, and reached into the back seat to unbuckle my daughter.
