Page 53 of Don't Go
“What?” She asked, already laughing out loud.
“I don’t like that word.”
She glanced at me and nodded once. “Okay.”
She let me have the silence for a minute before saying, quieter, with Bonnie now applying a sticker to Walter’s third arm, “How’s your dad?”
I had to find the words.
“He’s not — ”
I stopped and looked at the table, then at her. The grief came up through my face the way it had been doing for a month. Her hand came across the table and settled over mine, thumb brushing once across my knuckles.
“He’s not great.” My voice sounded faint to my own ears.
She didn’t push. She left her hand on mine, then took it back when Bonnie looked up.
Under the table, I reached for her hand.
She put hers in mine without looking, and gave my hand a gentle squeeze and looked at me.
We held the look for a few seconds.
Bonnie stopped talking.
She'd been mid-sentence abouttransparent jellyfish, and the sentence had run out. She was looking at Sabrina, then at me, then at the table where our shoulders almost touched. She was working the math.
“What are you two doing?”
“Nothing. Eating fish,” Sabrina blurted out.
Bonnie wasn't satisfied. “Why are you looking at each other like that?”
I let go of Sabrina’s hand. “Like what?”
“Like that.” Bonnie rolled her eyes. “Gross. Grown-ups are so weird.”
She stabbed a fry with her fork and ate it, offended.
The drive home was quieter.
Bonnie was in the back seat with Walter on her lap and her seatbelt across both of them. She was talking about Walter, about how he would need an introduction to Pickles and would Pickles be okay with him, and what would Pickles do —
By the third light, she had stopped talking.
I looked in the rearview. Her head was against the window, her eyes were closed, and Walter was tucked against her chest with both her arms around him.
Sabrina turned in her seat, and she turned forward again.
“Out cold.” She smiled.
I chuckled, glancing at Bonnie again in the mirror. “It was a long day.”
“A long, good day.”
At the next light, I looked over at Sabrina, and she was already looking at me.
I put my hand over hers on the center console, and she didn’t move it. My thumb ran across hers, and she turned her hand under mine and laced our fingers.
