Chapter 129 Mother and daughter reunion

Chapter 129 Mother and daughter reunion
Alexa’s POV 

Sleep came slowly that night. I lay in my bed looking at the ceiling, a different one from the apartment, the hospital, and from every ceiling I had been looking at for the past several weeks, Now is the time to think about what to do next. From where am I going to start. Who should I face first. Leon, or Aria. Because I honestly don’t think I can handle them both at once.

If I show up at the house, they might probably disregard me. And I don’t want to just show up, as if I could just walked back to their lives at my own accord. Something was telling to ho meet Leon at his work place, but I don’t know how he’ll react. I don’t want to disgrace myself in public. How do I stand in front of Leon with the enormous complicated weight of it what was between us. I literally dumped him for my ex. 

And Aria, I don’t know how she’ll react, but it seems convincing her and explaining things to her will be much more easier thab her father. Hopefully. So, Aria first.

The next day, I will go to their school, wait at the gate for the break time before going in. I will ask for permission that I needed to see Aria for something briefly, and will be allowed. If Aria came through, I don’t know what that moment will look like from her side. And that was the terrifying part.

I knew she had definitely asked her father about me, but I have no idea what his answer was. I knew all of that, but still I couldn’t fully predict the moment.

Children are not predictable. They were not guaranteed to respond to your return with the grace and forgiveness you hoped for. They had their own interior lives, their own way of processing things and their own version of the events, and sometimes, most of the time, they are right. Their feeling is always valid. I went MIA. I left without saying goodbye.

She needed to know why. And I don’t have that version of why that was appropriate for her age. Of course, she knows nothing about relationships. But I have to find one between now and tomorrow morning. I closed my eyes. Tomorrow. One thing at a time.

The school was twenty minutes from Catherine’s house. I knew the route. I had driven it more times than I could count, the turning at the roundabout, the street with the speed bumps that always caught you if you forgot, and then the school gates with the painted mural that the children had done two years ago. And of course Aria had contributed a blue bird to in the upper left corner. I had been there for that.

I could clearly remember the blue paint on her hands afterward. I parked down the street from the gates. Not directly outside, not wanting to be visible from the road in case any of the other school parents recognized me and said something that reached Leon before I was ready for that. I then walked to the reception entrance.

The woman at the desk had a pleasant manner, just like someone who managed a constant stream of parents and visitors, and had calibrated exactly how much warmth was appropriate for each category.

“I need to see my daughter,” I said. “Just briefly. During break if possible.” I gave Aria’s name and my own. “I’m her mother. I’ve been away and I wanted to…” I paused. “I just need to see her for a few minutes.”

The woman checked something on the computer and asked for my ID, which I provided it.

After a while, she looked back at me.

“Break is in twenty minutes,” she said. “I’ll have someone bring her to you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

There was a waiting room with two sofas, a low table, and a bookshelf with different kind of books that were chosen to be calming rather than interesting. The place was okay for exactly the kind of conversations that were too large for a corridor and also too private for an office. I sat on one of the sofas, looking at the window.

Outside, children were beginning to appear in the playground as break started. The first ones always the ones who had been watching the clock, who hit the door running. A group of boys with a ball, and some girls with something that looked like a skipping rope. I pressed my hands together between my knees.

Suddenly, the door opened. A teaching assistant I didn’t recognize, holding the door. And behind her…

Aria.

She came through the door and stopped, looking at me. For exactly one second her face was completely still.. the face of a child processing something that her brain had not finished deciding how to categorize yet. Her expression did several things at once, moving through them too fast to name. I was terrified for a moment.

Then it landed.

“Mummy.” She screamed, crossing the room and reaching me.

I was already off the sofa and down to her level. She hit me with the full-body commitment that she always brought to hugging… both arms all the way around my neck, her face pressed into my shoulder, her whole small body thrown itself into the contact with the wholehearted carelessness of a child that had been waiting for exactly this and was done being patient about it.

I held both arms around her. My face in her hair. Inhaling her therapeutic smell, the strawberry shampoo and underneath it, my Aria, just herself, unchanged and completely recognizable.

She started talking.

Of course she would talk. She had been talking since she could form words, and she had never identified a situation in which talking was not the appropriate response.

“Mummy where did you go,” she was saying into my shoulder. “You didn’t tell me. I woke up and you weren’t there. Maria said you went somewhere and Daddy also said you went somewhere but nobody told me where and I waited and you didn’t come back and…”

“I know,” I said. “I know baby. I know.”

“You didn’t say goodbye,” she said. The direct accusation of someone who had identified the wrong thing and was naming it clearly.

“I didn’t,” I said. “That was wrong of me. That was the most wrong part of everything and I am so sorry.”

She pulled back slightly to look at my face.

Her eyes were bright, not crying yet, but considering it, the way her eyes went when the emotion was large enough to be visible but she was deciding whether to let it through.

“Why didn’t you say goodbye?” she said.

I looked at her face.

The face that had Leon’s jaw and my eyes, and her own expression that belonged to nobody else.

“Because,” I said carefully, “I was scared that if I said goodbye to you I wouldn’t be able to go. And I needed to go for a little while.” I held her eyes. “But that was wrong. Even if I needed to go, not saying goodbye to you was wrong and I should have done it differently.”

She considered this with a seriousness she brought to things that mattered.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“I had some things to sort out,” I said. “Grown-up things. Things that needed my attention.” I brushed the hair back from her face. “But I’m back now.”

“For always?” she asked.

“I’m back,” I said. “And I am not going to disappear without telling you again. I promise you that.” I held her eyes so she would know I meant it. “Whatever happens. You will always know where I am.”

She looked at me for a long moment.

Then she nodded and hugged me again.

This one was different from the first one… less desperate, more settled. I held her and let myself be held, the waiting room went quiet around us, outside the playground continued its break time business while I press my face into my daughter’s hair and breathe.

She pulled back after a while, looking at me with the bright eyes that had decided not to cry and were maintaining that position.

“Daddy misses you,” she said that out of the blue, like a fact. Delivered with the directness of a child reporting observable fact. Something moved in my chest.

“Maria too,” she added. “Maria doesn’t say so but she had the face.”

“What face?”

“The one she does when she’s sad but hiding it,” Aria said. I looked at my daughter.

“We will have dinner together tonight,” she said. “You, me, Daddy and Maria. Like before.”

I looked at her face that looks hopeful and adorable. The assumption that this was a reasonable and achievable thing to ask for.

“I’m staying at Grandma Catherine’s house right now,” I said gently. “Just for a few days. So dinner there won’t work tonight.”

Her face adjusted.

“Tomorrow?” she asked.

“Soon,” I said. “I promise. Very soon.”

She nodded with the reluctant patience of someone who had decided to trust the promise. Then she looked at me with an expression that shifted into something more conspiratorial.

“I can’t wait to tell Daddy you’re back.” she said.

“Nooo. Not yet,” I said. “And I need to ask you something important.”

She straightened slightly. She always straightened when something important was coming. Like her body recognized the category.

“Can you keep a secret?” I said. “Just for a few days.”

Her eyes went wide. “What kind of secret?”

“Don’t tell anyone I’m back yet,” I said. “Not Daddy. Not Maria. Not even your friends.” I held her eyes. “I want to surprise them. I want to come back properly when the time is right. Can you do that for me?”

She was quiet for a moment, processing what I just said.

“I’m a very good secret keeper,” she said, feeling like she’s big enough.

“I know you are,” I said.

“Maria once told me a secret about Daddy’s birthday cake and I didn’t say a single word for two whole weeks.”

“That’s impressive.”

“It was extremely difficult,” she said seriously.

I laughed. Real. Genuine. Surprised out of me by the Aria-ness of the delivery.

She looked pleased with having produced it.

I pulled her back in and held her again, while she put her arms around my neck. And we stayed there in the waiting room, the playground outside and the day continuing around us and I thought…This.

This is what I came back for.

This is exactly what I came back for.