Chapter 20 Best Sunday

Chapter 20 Best Sunday

Lily's POV
"Where is she?" Wade ran into the room breathless.
"I cannot find her, I cannot!" I was checking every corner, every space, every spot she could possibly fit into. "She is not here!"
"Mia!" He screamed and ran back out to search the rest of the house.
We came back empty handed.
I was already crying properly by then, the kind that came with shaking hands and a tight chest.
"What am I going to tell your father?" I pushed Wade hard. "What am I going to say? This is all your fault!"
"My fault?" He stepped back. "You are the nanny."
"She is your sister and you are supposed to protect her!"
"I don't have to take advice from you," he said quietly.
"You are her older brother and you put her in danger by throwing a party for a bunch of wankers just to get back at me!" I said, my voice breaking on the last word.
He sat down on Mia's bed slowly and bent his head.
His eyes found the photo on her bedside table. The two of them together, Mia younger, both of them smiling the way children smile when nothing has happened yet to make smiling complicated.
"Growing up, we were best friends," he said quietly. Tears ran down his face without him trying to stop them. "But ever since she stopped talking I haven't known how to help her. Sometimes I just feel so overwhelmed. I just wish I could tell her how much she means to me."
I looked at him sitting there with his head bent and his tears falling on his sister's bedspread and the blame drained out of me completely.
This was not the time for that.
I sat beside him. "You know, I really like this side of you," I said.
"What, pathetic and sad?" He looked away.
"No," I said, and turned his face gently toward mine. "Caring and vulnerable."
His eyes softened and he moved toward me and my forehead was already against his when one of the cupboards behind us creaked open.
Mia crept out slowly, eyes wide, looking between us with a cautious expression.
"Mia!" We both jumped up and crossed the room at the same time.
Wade reached her first and pulled her into a hug so tight she disappeared into his arms. "You scared me," he said, his voice rough.
Mia pulled back and looked at me with uncertain eyes, as though she was trying to understand what she had walked out of.
"He's only upset because he's a big softie who missed you all night," I told her.
Something in her expression relaxed. She looked at her brother once more and then hugged him back properly.
I exhaled for what felt like the first time in hours.
By late morning the house was spotless.
We had worked through every room without discussing it, the three of us moving around each other with the quiet efficiency of people who understood what was at stake. Wade worked harder than I had ever seen him work at anything. He did not complain once.
"We are going to act like none of this happened," Wade said, straightening up and looking at Mia seriously. "Dad is not going to hear about the party. Can you promise me that Mia?"
Mia looked at me. I gave her a small nod.
She looked back at Wade and nodded.
"Wade," I said carefully. "You also have to act like nothing happened between us."
He looked at me. "How am I supposed to suppress how I feel?"
"You just have to," I said. "I cannot lose this job. That rumour about me and the teacher already ruined so much. My mother lost work because of the stress it caused. Her sickness got worse." I held his gaze. "I cannot give anyone another reason to make my life harder."
The guilt that moved across his face was immediate and visible.
"I can help," he said quietly. "With your mum. I want to."
"No. You don't have to do that. Just keep to the agreement."
"Lily, I can't just—"
I placed one finger gently over his lips.
He went quiet.
We settled in the living room with Mia between us watching her favourite show, the three of us on the same couch, and for a while nothing needed to be said.
Then someone knocked at the front door.
Wade went to answer it.
"Dad!"
Mia was off the couch before I could blink, running full speed to the door. Mr. Gambino caught her and lifted her into the air and spun her around and she smiled so widely I could see it from across the room.
I stood up and put my hands behind my back.
Mr. Gambino set Mia down and looked around the house slowly. Then he looked at me and something in his expression relaxed.
"I have never seen this house so clean," he said. He looked at Wade. "And you look composed." He crossed to me and shook my hand. "You are doing well Lily."
He crouched toward Mia. "How has everything been, my princess?"
Mia typed without hesitating. Lily has been very good.
"And your brother?" he asked.
Mia glanced at me. Then at Wade. Then back at me.
"Don't say it," I whispered.
She looked at her phone. He has been good.
Mr. Gambino laughed, a real one, surprised out of him. He reached into his bag and produced gifts, small and thoughtful, one for each of us. Mia examined hers immediately with complete absorption.
"Sir," I said, stepping forward. "I have a favour to ask."
He looked at me and nodded.
"Tomorrow after church, would you be able to take us to the park? All of us together." I paused. "I made Mia a promise."
He looked at Mia, who had looked up from her gift the moment she heard the word park and was now watching her father with very large, very patient eyes.
"That," he said slowly, "would be a good idea."
Mia's face broke open completely.
The park the next afternoon was everything.
The weather held and the sky was clear and Mr. Gambino sat on a bench watching Mia run with the ease of a man who had not watched his daughter run freely in a long time. She found her friend from the previous visit almost immediately and they disappeared into the organised chaos of children who have decided they belong to each other.
Mr. Gambino laughed more than I had seen him laugh since I arrived. He chased Mia across the grass when she demanded it and lost deliberately and looked at her face when she won and I watched him from a distance and thought about what it meant to be a father who had nearly lost everything and was slowly finding it again.
Wade appeared at my side while his father and Mia were occupied.
"Close your eyes," he said.
"Why?"
"Just do it."
I closed them and counted to five.
When I opened them he was on one knee in front of me holding a bunch of wildflowers he had clearly picked from the grass nearby, slightly uneven, completely sincere.
"Accept my humble gift," he said with complete seriousness.
I laughed so loudly that two children nearby turned to look at me. But it warmed every part of my chest and I took the flowers with both hands.
"Of course," I said.
We took photographs in the afternoon light, all four of us in various combinations, Mr. Gambino holding Mia, Mia pulling Wade down to her height, the four of us together with a stranger kind enough to hold the phone. Wade made sure to take one of just the two of us, standing close, his shoulder against mine, both of us squinting slightly into the sun.
He had it printed at a shop on the way home and pressed the copy into my hands without a word.
I held it carefully the whole drive back.
That Sunday was the best I had experienced in years. I kept thinking that as the evening settled in, kept wishing there was a way to keep it in place a little longer. But Mia needed to sleep and school was tomorrow and real life had a way of resuming regardless of how much you wanted it to wait.
I was just coming out of Mia's room, having stayed until she fell asleep, when I almost walked into Mr. Gambino in the hallway.
He steadied me with one hand and then paused.
"Lily," he said.
"Sir?"
He looked at me for a moment with an expression I had not seen on his face before. Open, quiet, stripped of the usual assessment.
"Wherever my wife is now," he said, "she would be so happy seeing the way Mia smiled today." He paused. "Thank you. For so much."
He patted my shoulder once and walked to his room.
I stood in the hallway alone for a moment.
Then I went to my room and lay on my bed and looked at the photograph on my bedside table and thought about the day until sleep came for me quietly and took me.