Fool Me Once(100)

I stayed—I still stay—because I love Lily with a ferocity a man usually saves only for his own child. And maybe I stay for something else. Lily is like her mother. She looks like her mother. She acts like her mother. Being around her, doing things for her—stay with me here—is the only way I get to keep Maya with me. That may be selfish, I don’t know. But I miss Maya. Sometimes, like when I used to drop Lily off after a baseball game or movie, I would almost feel like I was rushing somewhere to tell Maya all about the day and assure her that Lily was doing well.

Silly, right?

From her bed, Lily looks up and smiles at me. It is her mother’s smile, though I rarely saw it beam like this.

“Look, Shane!”

Lily doesn’t remember her mother. That kills me.

“You done good, kid,” I say.

People talk about Maya’s crimes, of course. She did kill civilians. She did, whatever justification you might give, execute a man. Had she survived, she would have gone to prison. No question about it. So maybe she chose death over life in prison. Maybe she chose to make sure the Burketts went down and couldn’t be in her child’s life over rotting in a cell and taking the risk. I don’t know anymore.

But Maya claimed to me that she never felt guilty about what she did overseas. I don’t know about that either. Those horrible flashbacks tore through her every night. People who feel no remorse aren’t haunted by their actions, are they?

She was a good person. I don’t care what they say.

Eddie told me once that he sometimes felt as though death was a part of Maya, that death followed her. It’s an odd way of putting it. But I think I get it. After what happened in Iraq, Maya couldn’t silence the voices. Death had stayed with her. She tried to rush forward, but Death would tap her on the shoulder. It wouldn’t leave. I think maybe Maya saw that. I think, more than anything else, she wanted to make sure death didn’t follow Lily.

Maya didn’t leave a letter for Lily to open at a certain age or anything like that. She hadn’t told Eddie how to raise her or why she had chosen him. She just knew. She knew that he would be the right choice. And he was. Years ago, Eddie asked me for my take on what to tell Lily about her biological parents and when. Neither of us had a clue. Maya often said that kids didn’t come with instruction manuals. She had left it up to us. She trusted that we would do what was best for Lily when the time came.

Eventually, when Lily was old enough to understand, we told her.

The ugly truth, we decided, was better than the fanciful lie.

Dean Vanech, Lily’s husband, bounces into the room and kisses his wife.

“Hey, Shane.”

“Congrats, Dean.”

“Thanks.”

Dean is military. I bet Maya would like that. The happy couple sit on the bed and marvel at their child the way new parents are supposed to. I look back at Eddie. He has tears in his eyes. I nod.

“Grandpa,” I say to him.

Eddie can’t answer. He deserves this moment. He gave Lily a good childhood, and I’m grateful. I will always be there for him. I will always be there for Daniel and Alexa. I will always be there for Lily.

Maya knew that, of course.

“Shane?”

“Yes, Lily.”

“Would you like to hold her?”

“I don’t know. I’m kind of clumsy.”

Lily won’t have any of that. “You’ll do just fine.”

Bossing me around. Like her mother.

I come to the bed and she hands me the baby, making sure to put the tiny head in the crook of my arm. I stare down at her in something approaching awe.

“We named her Maya,” Lily says.

I nod now because I can’t speak.

Maya—my Maya, the old Maya—and I saw a lot of people die. We used to talk about how dead was dead. That was it, Maya used to say. You die. It’s over. But right now, I’m not sure. Right now, I look down and I think maybe Maya and I got that one wrong.

She’s here. I know it.