“Why did you make it hard for her?”
“Mommy didn’t do it on purpose . . . Mommy just lost track of time. She wants so badly to not just be a good mommy but also a good person. It wasn’t Iris’s fault at all. She loves you two.”
“Then why did she leave? Why does everyone go away? Iris? Even our friends. And Dad.”
There it was. The gut punch. Tears welled up in Rachel’s eyes. She hugged Megan tight and stroked her hair.
“Oh, sweetie, your father didn’t go away, you know that. He still loves you from up on high.”
“But he’s still gone. And now Iris is gone.”
“You know that’s not the same thing,” Rachel said.
“How?” Megan said. She sat up, stared at her mother, defiance flaring in her eyes. “How is it different? I’m never going to see Iris again just like I’m never going to see my friends or Dad again. You told us that before we moved here.”
“You’ll always have memories of Iris,” Rachel said softly, “just like we still have memories of your dad.”
“I don’t have memories of Dad,” Megan said. “I was a baby. I don’t really remember anything. Sometimes it feels like I never had a dad.”
“Oh, baby, that couldn’t be further from the truth. You had a wonderful dad, and he loved you with all his heart. He still loves you, just from somewhere else.”
“I miss him so much. How can you miss someone you didn’t really know?” Megan began to cry.
There was no agony greater than seeing your child in pain. Rachel gathered her daughter into her arms and held her close. Her face grew hot as her daughter’s tears wet her blouse.
“You can miss your daddy. I miss him every single day.”
“It’s not fair,” Megan said. “I hope that man who took Daddy is dead.”
“Megan,” Rachel said. “Don’t say things like that.”
“I do. I hope they caught him and killed him.”
“Baby, you should never talk like that.”
“It’s not fair that he’s out there and Dad’s not.”
Rachel stayed silent. There was nothing she could say to make the hurt go away.
Besides, I agree with her.
“Hold on to those memories,” Rachel said. “And if they ever get fuzzy, come talk to me. I’ll make them whole again. I remember every moment like it was yesterday.”
Rachel kissed Megan on the cheek and stood up. “I’m going to see how your brother is doing. I hear there’s a new Wimpy Kid book out. I’ll bring you home a copy tomorrow.”
“That’s a bribe.”
Rachel laughed. “How do you know what a bribe is?”
“Iris taught us. Eric told her he would do his homework if she let him play fifteen more minutes on his computer. She said he was bribing her.”
“See. You really are a radar.”
Megan smiled. Rachel kissed her cheek one more time and went to see Eric.
Her son’s door was closed. She knocked—a habit that was hard to learn. One day he was her little man; the next day he wanted “privacy.”
“Yeah?” he said. Not the warmest welcome, but she was used to it. Rachel entered his room.
Eric was sitting at his computer, playing a game with so much going on it made Rachel’s eyes hurt. He was tapping away at the keyboard while a soldier with biceps the size of Buicks and a gun the size of a confectionary oven was massacring aliens that looked like giant gobs of purple-green phlegm with teeth.
“I didn’t say you could come in,” Eric said.
“You said ‘yeah.’ I took that as an acknowledgment of my presence.”
Eric shrugged. He paused the game right as one of the phlegm creatures was being blasted into intergalactic space goop. He swiveled his chair around. “So I guess Iris is toast.”
“She’s not toast. We just decided it was time for her to move on.”
“You’re lying. She quit.”
“Yes. She quit.”
“So what are you going to do with Megan when she gets home from school?”
“I’m not quite sure yet.”
“I can watch her when I get home.”
Rachel laughed. “Not yet you won’t.”
“I bet I’m cheaper than Iris was,” he said.
“And how exactly do you know how much Iris cost?”
“I saw you paying her one day. You were counting out twenties on the counter.” Eric paused. “It was a lot of twenties.”
“It costs a lot to convince someone to take care of two monsters like you and your sister.”
“So what are you going to do?” he said.
“I’ll think of something.”
Eric didn’t seem disturbed by Iris’s departure. She knew it would hit Megan hard. But she supposed Eric was older, didn’t need as much attention. He came home from school and went right to his room. But she knew he had also been pushing his emotions away, burying them. She worried his emotions had calcified. Megan had been younger when they’d left. Eric had friends. A life. And he had to say goodbye to all of it.
He was six when their lives were turned upside down. Young, but old enough to remember the way things used to be in a way that Megan did not. Losing Iris after everything he’d been through wouldn’t shake him. He’d lived through worse.
But Rachel wanted him to be upset. She wanted him to be a normal kid. To be affected the way other kids would be. But after the horror he’d experienced, those “normal” wires had been frayed. Eric was a good kid. No, a great kid. But Rachel was waiting for him to exhibit all the erratic behaviors that she had as a child, the reckless and capricious behaviors of a growing boy. She wanted Eric to get in trouble. Throw a baseball through a window. Drink a beer. Moon a tour bus full of nuns. Eventually break a few hearts.
It was hard for Rachel to complain that her son came home, did his homework, played around on his computer, and went to bed. But she felt his youth had been stolen well before its time, leaving a thirteen-year-old shell of a boy in its wake.
Rachel looked at the computer screen. “What on earth are you playing?”
“Galactic Warfare Brigade 11.”
“Eleven? Does that mean you already played the first ten? When do you have time for homework?”
“How are my grades?” Eric asked. “Because until my grades start to suck, you can’t tell me to do anything. Plus number twelve will be out next month, and I intend to play that one too.”
“How do you pay for these games?” she said.
“I don’t. I belong to an online group, and they post pirated versions of games and movies and music where you can get it for free.”
“Isn’t that stealing?” Rachel said.
“They don’t need the money,” he replied.
“Imagine you made a game. Spent years of your life working on it. And then someone stole it. What would you say?”
“That I should have been more careful.”
Rachel sighed and rubbed her temples. “I don’t know where you learned this behavior.”
“Can I unpause the game now? Or do you have more to say?”
Sometimes, at moments like these, she could visualize herself slapping her son. The casual cruelty was shocking. She took a breath. Eric was hurting. Lashing out.