Life and Other Inconveniences(96)

This summer had been so good for her, taken her out of herself a bit and let her remember who she was. She radiated a sense of pride . . . not because she was staying in this house or because she was the great-granddaughter of Genevieve London, but because she was needed, by Gigi and Donelle, her brothers, and Tess and Miller.

Maybe, in all my years of ultracareful parenting and watchfulness, I’d forgotten to let Riley grow up a little bit.

Tess and I changed without too much difficulty, though she was jumping up and down the whole time.

“I see Wiley! I want Wiley!” she kept saying. The straps of her bathing suit fell off her shoulders, so I tied them up with a hair ribbon. When we went downstairs, Miller was out by the pool, talking to Saanvi Talwar.

“Go away, Daddy!” Tess commanded, and his face lost all expression. He kept talking to Saanvi, though, and she gave me a little wave.

Tess was tough, all right. I took her over to the wisteria bower, where no one else was.

“I want swimming!” she said.

“Tess, when you told Daddy to go away, that made him feel bad,” I said.

“So what?” Her lower lip pushed out, and she looked away, telling me she knew she’d done wrong.

“What if I told you to go away, Tess? Or if Riley told you to go away? It would make you sad. Wouldn’t it?”

“No. Yes.” The lip got poutier.

“So why don’t we go up to Daddy, and you can say you’re sorry, and then we’ll go swimming with Riley?”

“I go swimming now.”

“No. You go swimming after you say you’re sorry.”

“I not sorry.” She stamped her little bare foot.

“You made your daddy feel sad. That’s not a nice thing to do. You say you’re sorry, or we can go upstairs where there’s no swimming.”

She scowled at me.

“Would you like to go swimming, Tess? Riley and some other kids are in the pool right now.”

“Yes. I go swimming with Wiley.”

“Then let’s say sorry to Daddy.” I scooped her up and carried her over. “Excuse me, Miller. Tess wants to say something.”

“Sorry, Daddy. Sorry.”

The way his face changed was remarkable. It softened with surprise, and his dark eyes widened a little. “Thank you, Tess.”

“I go swimming now.”

“Have fun.”

“We will. Thanks,” I said, smiling. “Great job, Tessie,” I whispered as I carried her to the pool’s shallow end. “You made Daddy feel happy.”

“Tess! Hooray!” Riley said. “Come on in here and play with us!”

Duncan and Owen were swimming around like eels, playing some kind of game with Rav, who was clearly their hero.

I went in and kept an eye on Riley’s supervision of Tess. Kids in the water always made me a little nervous, a leftover from the tale of Uncle Sheppard.

I wondered how my father would’ve been different if his big brother hadn’t disappeared. If he would’ve been better, stronger, more morally grounded.

I glanced over at Genevieve, who was talking to my grandfather (and, shockingly, not appearing to be irritated). Both of them had lost children, and both stories were almost unbearably tragic. Yet here they stood at a party, decades into their grief.

Please, God, I said silently. Please, Mom. Please, Grammy, and Grandpa Garrison, and Uncle Sheppard if you’re up there. Don’t let anything ever happen to Riley. Or Tess, or Duncan, Owen and Rav.

It was ridiculous, I knew. Children didn’t disappear or die because the parent hadn’t prayed enough. But there were no atheists in foxholes, as the saying went, nor in the hearts of parents.

When the kids got out of the pool, Riley and Tess and I went upstairs to her room to change. Tess’s hair was again almost dreadlocked with snarls. “Let’s see if we can do something here,” I said to my daughter. “Got a brush?”

“I no brush my hair,” Tess said firmly.

“Really? I do,” I said, doing just that. “It feels nice.”

“Your hair looks very shiny, Mom,” Riley said, grinning. “Want me to put some conditioner in it?”

“Sure!”

And so we were able to woo Tess into letting us put conditioner in her hair, combing out the snarls and even putting it in braids.

“How’s Rav?” I murmured as I French braided. I was an expert, having done Riley’s hair most of her life. Now that it was short, I missed this job.

“He’s a nice kid,” she said. “We might ride our bikes out to Birch Lake and hike a little this week, if it’s okay.”

“Oh. Um . . . let me think about that.”

“Mom. To hike, not to have S-E-X.”

“S-E-X,” Tess echoed, and Riley covered her mouth with her hand to smother the laugh.

“It’s probably okay. I just need to think about it.” I paused. “That’s where my uncle, uh, went away.”

“I know.”

“I’ll talk about it with Saanvi,” I said.

“Okay. Be protective. Come on, Tessie-bear, you look so cute! Look in the mirror. Aren’t you cute?”

“I cute,” she agreed.

“Let’s go show your dad,” Riley said. “I’ll give you a piggyback. Giddyup! Look, Mom! I’m Tessie’s horse!”