Chapter 48 - The Story She Didn’t Need
I told Lena about the grocery store after dinner.
She listened, then sat back in her chair.
“Oh, Isabel.”
Over the years, we had become practiced at telling our family’s history.
How Elena had loved the twins before they were born.
How Lena had entered the nursery.
How the boys had reached for her.
How our household had changed.
The story mattered.
Apparently, it had also become a place where our daughter struggled to find a seat.
The following afternoon, Lena asked Isabel to help sort photographs.
I joined them on the floor.
There were hundreds.
Isabel asleep on my chest.
Isabel discovering that grass could be pulled apart.
Isabel wearing one shoe and refusing the other.
She examined each with professional interest.
“What was happening here?”
Lena turned the photograph toward her.
“You’d learned how to splash.”
“Why is Daddy wet?”
“Because Daddy thought standing farther away would help.”
She laughed.
We found pictures of her first birthday, her first snow, and the afternoon she had painted Daniel’s hand blue because she misunderstood his offer to help.
Then she held up a photograph of herself standing between the twins.
“They already knew how to do things.”
“They were older,” I said.
“They already had Mama.”
“Yes.”
She pressed her thumb against the edge of the picture.
“So what happened when I came?”
I remembered the hospital room.
Lena exhausted.
The twins standing on either side of the bed, suddenly enormous beside their new sister.
Noah asking whether she knew who we were.
Nico worrying that her fingers were too small.
I told her.
She listened without interrupting.
“And then?”
“We brought you home.”
“And then?”
“You cried whenever I sat down.”
Lena laughed.
“That lasted longer than he likes to admit.”
Isabel looked pleased.
“Did you pick me up?”
“Yes.”
“Every time?”
“A great many times.”
She placed the photograph beside the others.
“Was I difficult?”
“Sometimes,” Lena said.
“Did you mind?”
“Sometimes I was tired. Sometimes I wanted five minutes to finish a sandwich.”
Isabel frowned.
Lena brushed her hair back.
“And I loved you while I was tired and hungry too.”
Our daughter thought about that.
Then she asked the question we had been approaching all afternoon.
“Was I important if nobody had to save me?”
I moved closer.
“You were important before anything happened.”
She studied my face.
“You still are.”
For a moment, she said nothing.
Then she began choosing photographs.
“This one.”
“And this one.”
“And the blue hand.”
By bedtime, she had filled six pages of an album.
May you like
On the cover, she asked Lena to write a title.
Isabel Was Here.
