Go sit with her. I'm going to call you. Call me in the morning. He said she needs you more than I do tonight. Quiet.
Daniel. Yeah. I love you. She said I love you. Go.
She went. He put the phone down. He went to Amara's room. She was asleep. Gerald in position.
The second place ribbon on the bulletin board. The anglerfish drawing pinned beside it. Signed in her careful handwriting at the bottom. Amara Brooks. Age nine for Victoria.
He hadn't known it was for Victoria. He stood there looking at the angler fish drawing the slightly too big eyes. The improbable light dangling from the head, the deep water suggested by blue crayon underneath. And he felt something he did not have a precise word for. The closest thing he could name was fullness.
Not happiness exactly, though happiness was in it. Not relief exactly, though relief was in it, too. Fullness. The specific quality of a life that has things in it that matter, including some things that cost you something, including one or two things you would not have chosen, but that turned out to be exactly what was needed. He had not felt full in 6 years.
He felt it now. Victoria came back from Detroit on a Sunday, 9 days later. She came straight from the airport to North Paulina Street, which she had not announced, and which meant she had her travel bag in the car and her airport exhaustion still on her face when Daniel opened the door. And none of that mattered at all. She looked at him.
He looked at her. He opened the door wider and she walked in and he put his arms around her right there in the doorway. The way you hold someone when they've been through something and they need to feel that the person they came home to is real and solid and genuinely there. She held on for a long moment. She just held on and he let her and neither of them said anything because nothing was needed from down the hall.
Victoria's here. Amara appeared Saturday dressed hair wild from whatever she'd been doing. Gerald in hand and she stopped when she saw them and assessed the situation with her particular 9-year-old clarity. Are you okay? She said to Victoria.
Victoria pulled back, looked at Amara. Getting there, she said honestly. Amara nodded. I made the drawing for you, she said. The anglerfish won.