“Smart girl.” I paused. “How is it, seeing your mother again?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Great, I guess. I mean, I do love her.” She broke a scone in half and didn’t say more. The furnace kicked on, humming companionably.
“Well, I just ate, but I’m gonna feed you. You’ve had dessert . . . how about some dinner?”
“Sure. Thanks.”
I made her what I’d always made Dylan when he was blue—tomato soup and grilled cheese. The bread was sourdough; I used four kinds of cheese, whipped up the tomato soup using canned tomatoes and cream, and set it all in front of Ophelia. She fell upon it like a starving coyote.
“This is amazing,” she said around a bite of the gooey cheese sandwich. “I can’t believe you did this in, like, twenty minutes.”
“It’s a gift,” I said. I tidied up while she ate. It was awfully nice to have a kid back in my house. Someone to take care of.
When she was finished, she very politely brought her dishes to the counter and set them in the sink.
“Let’s go upstairs and make a fire,” I said. “Perfect night for it.”
“I love your house,” she said, trailing after me. “It’s so . . . funky, you know? Like this chimney up to the balcony? Wicked.”
“Thanks. It was my grandparents’ house, and then my dad’s. I grew up here.”
“Seriously? You lived here all your life?”
“Yep. Except for college, that is.”
“Didn’t you ever want to live anywhere else?”
I paused. “Not really. I mean, I like traveling, but I love the Cape.” I paused. “Do you?”
“Sort of. I mean, our house isn’t as cozy as yours. It echoes. My room is, like, super fussy, because Melissa decorated it more for Instagram than for me. We have to eat at the dining room table every night, and Brad makes us say grace first.”
I snorted. “Really.”
“Yeah. We go to church now. We didn’t have to in New York.”
Brad in church. That was rich. He had to be forced to attend when he’d been married to me, and he’d only go for the big holidays.
“Anyway, your mother is visiting. That must be . . .”
“It’s great.” She didn’t sound convinced. “I mean . . . I barely saw her growing up. Back in Ohio, I mean. My bio-dad’s parents took care of me, and Mom . . . she’s got a drug problem, and a crime problem, and money problems, so . . .” She sighed and pushed back her tangled blond curls. “So anyway, my gran had a stroke, and Mom was heading for jail again, so she called Melissa and asked if I could live with her. And Melissa came out and got me and changed my name and put me in all these classes in New York and paraded me around like her charity project, which I guess I was.” She slurped her soup. “But it was . . . it was okay, because I mean, I did have a nice place to live, and there was always enough food, and I didn’t have to wear hand-me-downs or shop at Goodwill or eat Hamburger Helper.”
“And there was Dennis.”
“Exactly. And Melissa, she wasn’t awful or anything. She wasn’t mean. I just felt like she didn’t really care about me, you know? Like I could’ve been any kid from anywhere, and she would’ve been . . . what’s that thing you say when someone’s trying to show how good they are?”
“Oh. Um . . . virtue signaling?”
“Yeah. That. But lately . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she didn’t finish the thought.
Ophelia was smart, and observant. “How long have you lived with Melissa?”
“Almost six years, I guess.”
“And now your mom wants to bring you back to Ohio?”
She nodded.
“Is that what you want?”
She grabbed Teeny from where she lay between Zeus’s giant paws, and held the wee rat against her shoulder. “I don’t know,” she said. “Not really? But I do love my mom. I just . . . I don’t trust her.”
Then she was crying, quietly, trying not to sob, the poor baby. Adults and their stupid lives, always messing up children. I sat next to her and pulled her head onto my shoulder. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” I said.
“I wish I could live with you,” she said, and I closed my eyes. I wished so, too. For a second, the longing to have a daughter—my daughter, or anyone’s daughter—washed over me.
But Ophelia wasn’t mine, and I knew better than to make a hollow promise. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go into the den and watch a funny movie. It’s the perfect night for it. I’m sure schools will be shut tomorrow, so we can stay up late and eat popcorn and ice cream. Sound like a plan?”