He poured himself a drink and stared out the window at the night just beginning to fall across the bay. He heard Lulu come up behind him. She climbed monkeylike up his body, attaching to his hip. “Betsy is crying, Daddy,” she said in that squeaky voice of hers.
He kissed her forehead, sighing.
“It’s about Mommy,” she said, then burst into tears. “She got losted or hurted, right?”
He tightened his hold on Lulu. “No, baby. Mommy’s fine.”
“I miss my mommy.”
He rocked her back and forth, soothing her until her tears dried. When she was calm again, he put her down on the sofa and started The Little Mermaid DVD. That would keep Lulu busy for a while. She should be in bed, of course. It was late. But all he could think about was Jo, and what could have happened.
He didn’t really make a decision; rather, he found himself moving toward his office. He went inside and shut the door. His hands were shaking; ice rattled in his glass.
It could have been.
He slumped onto the sofa and bowed his head. Betsy was worried that she was forgetting her mother. But Michael had forgotten Jolene long before, hadn’t he? He’d lived with her, slept with her, and still somehow had forgotten the woman he’d married. He glanced to his left and saw a framed picture of him and Jolene; it had been taken years ago, at the arboretum in Seattle. They had been young then, and so in love. Look at the family of ducks, Michael, that will be us one day, waddling along with our babies in tow … In that one image, in Jolene’s bright smile, he remembered her.
He was a little unsteady as he got to his feet. At the bookcase, he withdrew a leather-bound photo album and an old VHS tape. Tucking them under his arm, he went into the family room, asked Lulu to follow him, and went upstairs.
He knocked on Betsy’s door. “Can we come in?”
“Okay.”
He picked up Lulu, carried her into the room, and sat down on the bed beside Betsy. Settling a girl on each side of him, he opened the album.
Centered in the first page, covered by a shiny piece of see-through plastic, was one of the few pictures he’d ever seen of his wife as a young girl. She stood on a rocky outcropping, wearing faded jeans and a cheap V-neck sweater. She was turned slightly away from the camera, looking into some invisible distance, with messy strands of long blond hair pulled across her face by the wind. Off to the left was a man walking away; all you could see was a ragged jeans hemline and a scuffed black boot.
Jolene had often said she’d chosen this photo to begin her life’s trail because it was so representative: her mother was missing and her dad was leaving. He’d seen this picture lots of times, but now he really looked at it, saw how sharp she looked, how thin. Her hair looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb in weeks, and the loss in her eyes was wrenching. She was watching the man walk away. Why hadn’t he noticed that before?
“She’s about fifteen here. Not much older than you, Bets.”
“She looks sad,” Betsy said.
“That’s cuz we aren’t borned yet,” Lulu said, repeating what Jolene always said about this photograph.
Michael turned the pages slowly, taking his girls on a journey down the road of Jolene’s life. There were pictures of Jolene in her army uniform, seated in a chopper, out playing Frisbee. In each successive photograph, she looked taller, stronger, but it wasn’t until their wedding picture that he saw her, the woman with whom he’d fallen in love. She’d smiled and cried through the ceremony, and told him it was the happiest day of her life.
Our lives, he’d said, kissing her. We will always be in love like this, Jo.
Of course we will, she’d said, laughing, and they’d believed it for years and years, until … they hadn’t. No, until he hadn’t.
“She looks pretty,” Lulu said.
He knew all that Jolene had lost in her life, and the things she’d never had and the things she’d overcome, and yet in all of these pictures, she looked incredibly happy. He’d made her happy; that was something he’d always known. What he’d forgotten was how happy she’d made him.
“When is she coming home?” Lulu asked. “Tomorrow?”
“November,” Betsy said with a sigh. “For just two weeks.”
“Oh.” Lulu made a small, squeaking sound. “Will I be five by then?”
“Yep,” Betsy said. “But she won’t be here for your birthday.”
Before Lulu could start crying, Michael got up and put a tape in the TV. Since Jolene’s deployment, the girls had obsessively watched the “good-bye reels,” as he liked to call them—the tapes she’d made for each of the girls. But they hadn’t seen this one in years.