Then she yawned. A huge yawn that took up her whole face. And she curled her tiny fist around the collar of his clean blue shirt and fell asleep.
Ben made a sound I’ll never forget. Not a sob, exactly. Something deeper. Something that came from the very bottom of him.
“Hi, Evie,” he whispered. “Hi, baby girl. I’m your dad. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there. I’m here now. I’m here now, I promise.”
I stood by the window and watched them, and I didn’t cry. I’d done enough crying. I just watched.
When the hour was up, my dad came to the doorway. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there.
Ben looked up. He nodded. He stood, very carefully, and handed Evelyn back to me.
At the door, he stopped.
“Same time next week?” he asked. “If that’s okay. Only if that’s okay.”
“Same time next week,” I said.
He came every Saturday after that. Then, after a month, Wednesdays too.
My dad stopped standing in the doorway after the fifth visit. By the eighth, he was asking Ben if he wanted coffee. By the twelfth, they were standing in the backyard together looking at my dad’s tomato plants, which were dead because it was December, and talking about them anyway.
Ben learned how to change a diaper. Badly at first. Evelyn screamed the whole time.
“She hates me,” he said, horrified, holding a dirty diaper at arm’s length.
“She screams at everybody,” I said. “That’s not you failing. That’s just babies.”
My mom, from the kitchen, laughed out loud.
He learned the song I sang her when she was fussy. He learned that she liked to be bounced, not rocked, and that she liked the sound of running water, and that if you blew gently on her forehead she’d stop crying for exactly four seconds out of sheer surprise.
