Page 33 of Daddy's Ring
She's here. In Philadelphia. Walking down Locust like it's nothing, like she didn't rip out my chest and take it with her to wherever she went.
I should turn around. Should walk away and pretend I never saw her, honor the one thing she asked of me even though seeing her now feels like coming back to life after being dead so long I forgot what breathing felt like.
But I can't. Can't make my feet move in any direction except forward, maintaining the same distance, watching her like a starving man watches food through a window he can't break.
She's more beautiful than I remember. The years have sharpened something in her face, made the angles more defined, but she's still— she's still everything I ever wanted and destroyed in the same breath.
The vanilla scent probably doesn't reach me from this distance but I swear I can smell it anyway, can remember exactly how it mixed with coffee and the laundry detergent she always used. Can remember burying my face in her neck and breathing her in like she was the only air I needed.
She stops outside a bookstore—Storybound Books, the sign reads—and adjusts something on her chest that I can't quitesee from this angle. Then she turns to face the window, saying something to herself, and I see it.
The baby.
Strapped to her chest in one of those carrier things, facing her. Small. Less than a year—I've never been good at guessing ages for kids. But definitely a baby. Definitely hers, based on the way she's looking down at it with an expression I've never seen on her face before.
Soft. Tender. Completely absorbed.
"Look, baby girl," she says, voice carrying just far enough that I catch it. "I need to get inventory done but you're being so good for me, yeah? Such a good girl."
The baby makes some noise I can't hear and Zola laughs. Actually laughs. The sound hits me like a bullet through the sternum.
She had a baby.
She's here, in Philadelphia, with a baby strapped to her chest and that expression on her face like this tiny person is her entire world, and I'm standing thirty feet away realizing that everything I thought I understood about the last eight years was wrong.
I knew that she said I needed to move on. But some part of me always thought that Zola did this to protect herself, that her heart was as much mine as mine is hers.
That's not what happened.
Instead, she left and built a whole life. Found someone else. Had the family we used to whisper about at three in the morning when we thought we were too young but maybe someday?—
My throat closes. Actually closes. I can't swallow, can't breathe, can't do anything except watch her adjust the baby's position and press a kiss to its head—dark curls, darker than Zola's, visible even from here—before opening the bookstore door and disappearing inside.
The street feels very quiet suddenly.
Very empty.
I should leave. Should walk away, go to Fishtown, check the warehouse, call Lian back and ask about something that doesn't matter. Should go home to Bianca and her expensive perfume and the life I agreed to because I had nothing left worth protecting.
Instead I stand here on Locust Street staring at a bookstore window like I'll spontaneously develop x-ray vision if I just focus hard enough.
She had a baby.
The thought repeats itself, stuck on loop, driving deeper each time until it hits something I thought had gone numb years ago.
This is what I wanted. Exactly this. Zola, and a life with her, and kids that would have her sharp mind and stubborn independence. I used to imagine it in the apartment we shared—her pregnant and complaining about swollen ankles while I cooked dinner, a baby that looked like her learning to walk while holding onto my fingers, teaching them to be better than both of us combined.
But she can't have kids. The accident destroyed that possibility. Dr. Reeves was clear about it, explained the emergency hysterectomy in clinical terms that meant Zola would never carry a child.
Unless the doctors were wrong. Unless somehow?—
No. I saw the medical reports. There was no ambiguity.
Maybe the baby is someone else's and she's just helping, being Zola, always taking care of people who need her.
Or maybe she met someone else and they built this together, adopted or found a way, and I'm standing on a street corner realizing that she moved on while I spent all this time bleeding out in slow motion.
The baby's features flash through my memory. Dark curls. Hard to tell much else from the brief glimpse, but clearly loved. Clearly hers in every way that matters.
