Chapter 8
— A Long Night
I did not sleep that night. I sat in the chair beside Poppy's bed, and I watched her breathe, and I listened to the house, and I waited for the morning to come. The house was quiet in a way it had not been quiet in months, not the heavy quiet of grief, but the clean quiet of a place that belongs to the people who live in it. Veronica's lavender was still in the air, faint and fading, and her shoes were gone from the hallway, and her notebook was gone from the kitchen table, and the house felt, for the first time in a long while, like mine.
Poppy stirred in her sleep, and she reached out with one small hand, and I took it in mine, and she settled again. I thought about the day, and about the words Dolores had told me, and I felt the anger rise in me again, and I let it pass. What would help her was a father who stayed, and who told her the truth as many times as she needed to hear it.
Around midnight, Poppy woke up. Her eyes opened in the dark, and she looked at me, and for a moment she seemed confused, as if she had forgotten where she was, and then she remembered, and her face crumpled.
"Daddy," she whispered, "is my hair still gone?"
I leaned closer, and I took her small hand, and I said, "Yes, sweetheart. But it will grow back. I promise you it will grow back."
"Will it be the same?" she asked.
"It will be the same," I said. "It will be your curls, and they will be brave, and they will bounce when you run, and they will be beautiful, just like before."
She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, "Veronica said nobody would love a girl with messy hair."
"Veronica was wrong," I said, and I said it with all the certainty I had. "Nobody in this world is loved because of their hair. You are loved because you are Poppy. You are loved because you are brave and bright and kind, and because you tell your dolls stories about queens who live in trees, and because you count fireflies in the garden. That is why I love you. That is why your mama loved you. That is why Dolores loves you. And nothing anyone says can change that."
Poppy thought about that for a while, the way she thought about everything, seriously and slowly. "Will Veronica come back?" she asked.
"No," I said. "Veronica is gone, and she is not coming back. The wedding is off. There will be no rehearsal dinner, and no wedding, and no one will ever tell you that you need to be fixed again. Not while I am here."
She nodded, and she moved over in the bed, and she patted the pillow beside her. "Stay with me, Daddy."
So I climbed into the narrow bed beside her, and she curled against my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her, and I felt her small body relax against mine, and I listened to her breathing slow and deepen as she fell back asleep. I lay there in the dark, with my daughter in my arms, and I thought about the years ahead, about the mornings I would brush her hair as it grew back, about the stories I would tell her under the tree, about the life we would build together, just the two of us and Dolores, in a house that was a home again.
I thought about Meredith, too. I thought about the way she used to lie in this same bed with Poppy when she was small, singing to her in a low voice until she fell asleep. I thought about the stories she had written for her, and the pictures she had drawn in the margins, and the way she had believed, with her whole heart, that a child should be loved exactly as she was. I wished she was here. I wished she could have held Poppy tonight, and told her that her curls would grow back, and that she was loved. But she was not here, and so it was my job, and I would do it, for as long as it took, and as many times as it needed to be done.
The night went on, slow and quiet, and the house settled around us, and the tree outside the window moved gently in the wind. I did not sleep. I stayed awake and I held my daughter, and I made a promise to her in the dark, a promise I did not say out loud, because she was asleep and did not need to hear it. I promised that I would protect her, and that I would listen to her, and that I would never again let someone into our house without knowing who they truly were. I promised that her curls would grow back, and that her voice would grow stronger, and that one day she would tell this story herself, in her own words, and she would not be afraid.