She’s so young and so old in the same body. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail that puffs out like the head of a dandelion, and her big gray eyes are serious. There is no face on this planet that I love better. Tears prick the back of my eyes, and I have to blink to keep them where they belong. “Of course. I’m glad to listen.”
“Number one—I don’t want to be so far away from my nana.” She looks at me, raises her second finger. “Two, I like living by the ocean, not in the city. Three, my mom can fly back and forth a lot easier than you can. Four, it’s healthier for kids to live in nature. Five, I can have pets here and my mom won’t have to deal with them.” She moves to her left hand. “Six, London has a lot of crime. Seven, England has a monarch and I don’t agree with that. Eight, they won’t like my American accent and might make fun of me, and that would really hurt my feelings. Nine—well, that’s all.” She closes the notebook. “I am still working on it.” As if she’s the CEO of a small corporation, she folds her hands on top of the notebook. “But you and my mom need to listen to me. I’m not just being a kid. This affects my life, too, and I should have a say.”
I nod, folding my own hands over hers, and let my gut settle. Of course she’s right about a lot, but she’s also wrong, and she doesn’t know the good things. Also, it’s nonnegotiable, no matter what she thinks or how persuasive her arguments are. I remember wanting so desperately to live with Beryl instead of my parents, and it would have broken my father’s heart. And it would break Stephanie right in two. “That is a great list. I’m proud of you for being so logical.”
She yanks her hands from beneath mine. “But you’re still not going to listen, are you?”
“Jasmine, you know I love you and I want you to be happy. But this is not my decision. It’s your mother’s. And you know what else?”
“What?”
“I know you love her and want to be with her.”
She blinks away tears. “I do love her. I miss her.” She steadies herself. “But I still don’t want to go.”
“It’s going to be okay, Jazzie. I promise.”
Her face says she doesn’t believe me. I reach for the checkerboard on the side of the table. “Let’s play while we wait for dinner. We can talk more about this, okay?”
“Fine.”
We set up the board and she takes red, as always. “Last night, I read that once London was bombed for nine months in a row, every single night.”
“Ah.”
“Is that true?”
I pause. It’s not exactly correct, but the facts will not help. “The Blitz,” I say. “It was a long time ago, during World War II.” I move my piece.
She frowns at the move, takes a minute to evaluate her choices. “What’s World War II?”
How to sum up such a conflagration in a sentence or two without being too reductive or simplistic? “It was a terrible war. A very bad leader came to power in Germany in the 1930s, and he tried to take over Europe, but he was defeated.”
“And he bombed London?”
“Yes. And many other places. Your move.”
She jumps my piece and takes it, and I take hers, leaving her to study the board a second. “But how was there anything left after all those bombs? That’s like a whole school year!”
“It was. But the English refused to give up. Maybe you can explore some of it when you’re there.”
“I don’t want to go to a place that gets bombed!”
“That was over eighty years ago,” I say.
“I don’t care. I don’t want to go there in case it happens again.” She leaps two of my pieces and gets crowned. “America doesn’t get bombed.”
“Well, it has been sometimes, actually, but I don’t think that’s what you’re going for here.”
“I just want to be safe. How can you be safe if there’s tsunamis and bombs and pandemics and school shootings? And wars?”
For a moment, I say nothing, trying to gather my thoughts. When I was ten, I wanted to create a campaign to pick up all the litter in the world. I was worried about birds getting slimed by oil spills and about nuclear bombs destroying the world. I decide to go with the truth. “Unfortunately, my sweet, terrible things can happen. Here or England or anywhere. But mostly they don’t. Mostly we’re okay.”
She looks unconvinced. The buzzer goes off on the stove. I stand and kiss her springy hair. “You’ll be safe in England. Please set the table.”