“No, no, I’m happy where I am. Anita will take care of me,” he said.
Of course she would. I didn’t say anything.
“I should probably get going. I just wanted you to know. Penelope?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
I swallowed hard. “Thanks, Dad. Please keep me posted about your health, okay?”
“Love you,” he said by way of an answer. Then he was gone.
I was still staring at the phone when the front door opened and my family’s voices rang through the air. It might have been the most joyful clamor I’d ever heard, but I still felt myself sinking back into the dark space where I’d been spending so much time lately. My father may have been a lousy parent, but he was the only parent I had. He couldn’t die.
Sanjay walked into the kitchen, took one look at me, and said, “What happened?”
“My father just called to say he has stomach cancer. He’s having surgery next month.”
“Oh, Pen, I’m sorry,” he said. “When is it scheduled?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know what stage his cancer is?”
I shook my head. “You know my dad—when it comes to personal info, less is more.”
Sanjay’s expression had quicksilvered from concern to what looked an awful lot like anger. “He thinks this is only about him.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to be the one to point out that it’s not. I can’t force him to share things with me.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t get it.”
“You don’t get what?”
“You’ve been pushing Matt to be present for Cecily. Which is great—someone needs to do it.”
“What does that have to do with my father?” I asked.
He frowned at me, like I had just asked a stupid question. “I just wish that you’d advocate for yourself the way you do for Cecily.”
I felt like I’d been slapped.
“Don’t look at me like that, Penny,” said Sanjay. “I’m only saying this because I love you.”
“It’s fine,” I said, not meeting his eye. “You’re right.”
And he was. If the past few months had taught me anything, it was that I could be honest. Brutally honest, even. Except when it came to the things that hurt the most.
The following afternoon Matt dropped Cecily off for a playdate. She looked sullen when they arrived, but her face brightened when she saw the kids and me in the kitchen.
I knew the feeling. My mind had been on my father most of the morning, but seeing Cecily pulled me out of my mental fog. “Hey, you,” I said, hugging her. “Happy to have you over.”
“Thanks, Aunt Penny.” She grinned up at me. “Are we going to have ice cream today?”
I turned to Matt. He was clean shaven and looked less distraught than the last time I’d seen him. But unless I was imagining it, a chill remained between us. He shrugged. “Okay with me.”
“Yay! We’re going to have ice cream!” Cecily announced to Miles and Stevie. The three of them started whooping, and before I could tell them to take it outside, they went tearing off into the backyard.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’s happier here than at home,” said Matt. He glanced around the kitchen. “Can’t say I blame her. I forgot how inviting your place is.”
“I don’t know about that,” I said. I had intended to clean up before Cecily came over, but I had just pulled out the cleaning spray when Miles was stung by a bee. It had more or less been downhill from there.
“What Penny means is thank you,” said Sanjay from behind me.
Matt laughed, surprising me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard him laugh, let alone seen him smile, and I found myself smiling, too. “I definitely meant thank you,” I said.
Through the window, Miles and Cecily were jumping as high as they could on the trampoline to try to get Stevie, balled up in the center, to bounce. Popcorn, they called this game of theirs, and every time they played it, I wondered what possessed me to set up an enormous accident machine in my backyard.
“Hey, what are you guys doing with the kids at the end of the summer?” asked Matt. “I’d been counting on camp running until Labor Day and just found out it closes the week before.”
“I’m supposed to be watching them,” said Sanjay, “but there’s a slim chance I might be working that week. I’ve been interviewing for a communications position at the College of Liberal Arts.”
Matt was visibly surprised. “Really? I thought the writing thing was going really well.”
“It is and it isn’t. I’m hoping to sell a book soon, but I’m not making enough freelancing. It’s time to make a change.”
“Good for you, Sanj. I’m impressed.”
I snuck a glance at Sanjay to see if he looked regretful, but he just smiled. “Thanks, man,” he said. “You want a beer?”
“Sure—that sounds like just the thing.”
Sanjay opened a couple of bottles, and they went out back to sit on the deck. As I watched them and the kids through the window, there were a few seconds where it all seemed so normal that I forgot Jenny wasn’t in the other room or on her way over.
Then Matt came back inside. I wanted to remind him that I had finished the post for Jenny’s website, but the way he was approaching me said he had something else on his mind.
Sure enough. “Penny, if you or Sanjay do end up watching the kids the last week of August, do you think you could take Cecily, too? I haven’t been able to line up a sitter. I was going to send her to my parents in Maine, but she doesn’t want to go.”
“I can,” I said slowly. “But don’t you think it would be more fun to take that week off and do something together? I bet she’d love to go to Maine if you went with her.”
He glared at me. “Can we have one conversation where you don’t tell me how I’m the worst father in the universe?”
“I’m pretty sure you know that wasn’t my intention.”
“And yet.” He set the beer bottle, which was half full, on the counter. “I’m going to head out. I’ll be back for Cecily in an hour.”
Our plan had been for her to stay through dinner. There was no way he had forgotten that. I stared at him, wondering if he was really so hurt—or cruel—that he would cut Cecily’s visit short just because he felt I had insulted him.
But he was right. He was Cecily’s parent. Her only parent now. Like everything else regarding his daughter, when she left my house was ultimately his decision to make.
“We’ll see you then,” I said.
That evening, Stevie and Miles were cooling off in the living room watching Planet Earth .
“Is there room for one more?” I asked, plopping down between them on the sofa.
“Mommy!” said Miles, not taking his eyes off the screen.
Stevie was slightly more attentive. “Are you okay?” she asked, patting my leg.
“Yes, sweetie,” I told her. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because you and Matt weren’t getting along,” she said.
The child didn’t miss a thing. Matt had returned exactly when he said he would. Though he acted as though our conversation had never happened, Cecily howled in protest over having to leave early, which in turn left me in tears. He and I exchanged chilly goodbyes without making promises or plans to get together again. As I watched them drive off, I had to shake off the thought that I might not see Cecily again anytime soon.
“I guess we’re not,” I admitted. “But it will blow over.”
She looked doubtful. “Really?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I hope so,” I said. I put my arm around her. “Which episode are you guys watching?”
“The one about mountains,” said Stevie.
“Ooh, I haven’t seen that one.” I settled back into the sofa cushions. On the television, two snow leopards were traipsing across a mountainside. The narrator introduced them as a mother and her nearly grown cub. The pair wrestled playfully, and then the mother began to groom her daughter. Though the cub was nearly as large as her mother, said the narrator, she had more to learn before going off on her own.
The kids and I watched, rapt, as the older leopard protected her child from two male leopards during mating season. While successful, she was wounded in the process, and as she limped into a cave with her daughter behind her, the narrator speculated it was possible neither would survive; the cub still needed her guidance to navigate mountain life.
As Stevie gripped my arm, I found myself blinking back fresh tears.
Then the mother snow leopard appeared again. The video had been taken several months after her injury and, no longer wounded, she was crossing a cliffside with ease. In later footage, her daughter—healthy, alive, and now navigating the mountain alone—followed her mother’s trail. Separated by just a few miles, the two would live parallel lives, said the narrator, but it was likely they would never see each other again.
“Mommy, why are you crying?” asked Miles as the credits began to roll.