Chapter 6 - Hot Chocolate
Three days later, I called Bethany.
"I'd like to meet Ivy."
A pause. "Are you sure?"
"No." I breathed. "But I want to anyway."
Ivy sat next to her mother at a little table, both hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate with a mountain of whipped cream sliding off the top. She had Daniel's careful eyes — the ones that measure a room before deciding it's safe.
We talked about school. Her drawings. Her class hamster. Small, easy things.
Then she asked the question she'd clearly been holding onto the whole time.
"Are Jasper and Eli really identical?"
"They really are."
"Does Dad ever mix them up?"
The word Dad stung. I let it.
"More than he'll ever admit."
Her eyes went wide. "Really?"
"He once called Eli 'Jasper' through an entire diaper change. Then argued with me about it."
She laughed. It wasn't quite Daniel's laugh. But it was close enough that I saw him in it, and that was its own small ache.
Then she dug into her backpack. "I made another one."
Bethany touched her wrist. "Ivy, you don't have to."
"It's okay," I said.
Ivy hesitated. "Mom said maybe I should wait."
"You can show me."
She slid the paper across.
Two babies in lopsided blue blankets. Above them, in that same wobbly crayon:
MY BROTHERS
I looked at her. She hadn't built this lie. She'd been living inside it, same as me — she just didn't know there was a lie at all.
I wasn't going to make an eight-year-old pay for what the adults around her had decided.
"Would you want to meet them someday?"
She glanced at Bethany, then back at me.
"Yes."
May you like
"Okay," I said.
That was as far as I could promise.
