Chapter 12: The Water in Her Dreams
Celeste was charged with attempted first-degree murder of a child.
The news broke two days later.
GRANDMOTHER CHARGED IN YACHT PLOT AGAINST 3-YEAR-OLD HEIRESS.
I hated that word.
Heiress.
Zuri wasn't an heiress. She was a little girl who liked purple dolphins and apple juice and the song about the itsy-bitsy spider. She couldn't even spell her own name yet.
We went home to Savannah.
I thought that would help.
It didn't.
The first night back, Zuri woke up screaming at 2:17 in the morning.
I ran into her room. She was sitting straight up in bed, eyes wide open, clawing at the sheets.
"The water! Daddy, the water's coming!"
"Zuri. Baby. You're home. You're in your bed."
She didn't hear me.
She was holding on to the edge of her mattress with both hands, white-knuckled, sobbing, her whole body shaking.
Holding on.
Still holding on.
It took me forty minutes to calm her down.
It happened again the next night.
And the next.
She wouldn't take a bath. The sound of running water made her scream. She wouldn't go near the swimming pool at her daycare. She wouldn't even let me fill her sippy cup at the sink while she was in the room.
She stopped saying "Daddy" and started saying "Don't go."
Don't go, when I left the room to get a glass of water.
Don't go, when I went to the bathroom.
Don't go, when I put her down for a nap.
And she wouldn't take off the lanyard.
Not to sleep. Not to eat. Not even when the endocrinologist needed to change her sensor. She held the clear pouch against her chest with both hands and screamed until the nurse gave up.
"She thinks the phone saved her," Dr. Amara Nwosu explained gently.
Dr. Nwosu was a child trauma therapist. Soft-spoken. Patient. She sat on the floor of her office with Zuri and a dollhouse and never once pushed.
"In her mind," Dr. Nwosu said, "the phone is the reason Daddy came. If she takes it off, Daddy might not come next time."
I put my face in my hands.
"How do I fix it?"
"You don't fix it," Dr. Nwosu said. "You help her carry it. Slowly. Until it gets lighter."
"How long?"
"As long as it takes."
That night, after Zuri finally fell asleep, I went into the garage and found a box I hadn't opened since the funeral.
Simone's things.
Her reading glasses. Her lesson plans. The scarf she always wore in winter. An old phone with a cracked screen.
I charged the phone.
When it turned on, there were 3,412 videos in the camera roll.
I scrolled for hours.
Most of them were Zuri. Zuri eating. Zuri sleeping. Zuri pulling the dog's ears. Zuri dancing to music in the kitchen with a wooden spoon.
And then I found it.
A video from eighteen months ago. Bath time.
Simone kneeling beside the tub, sleeves rolled up. Zuri covered in bubbles, splashing.
Simone was singing.
"If you're lost and you're scared and you can't see me, Hold the phone up high and say it with me—"
And Zuri, eighteen months old, shrieking with laughter:
"HEY SIRI, CALL DADDY!"
Simone threw her head back and laughed.
Then she looked straight into the camera, straight at me, because I was the one holding it.
"She's gonna be okay, you know," Simone said, smiling. "Whatever happens. She knows what to do. We taught her."
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The video ended.
I sat on the garage floor with my dead wife's phone in my hands and cried until the sun came up.
