His messages are my only new ones for the morning, so I flip back to the older ones — the last I received from Zoe. Every time I read her words, no matter how innocuous or silly, gravity feels like less of a fact.

“I’m going to the grocery store,” Mom says after finishing her burner routine. She slips on her shoes and picks up her purse. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

The clock reads exactly 10:40 a.m. Even numbers. Safe times.

After the garage door closes (twice) and she disappears, I rinse out my bowl and put it in the dishwasher, then go back to my room. I should call Dad back, while it’s still a reasonable time in London, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know what to say.

The part of me that wants to see Dad has grown bigger than the part that’s angry he left — especially now that I realize Mom had more to do with him not seeing or communicating with me than I thought. I don’t even know who to be angry with anymore. Why did I ever trust Mom over him? She answers to a thousand inexplicable priorities before dealing with things that are real and important. Dad was never that way. Still, he can’t come back now. I can’t imagine how Mom would react if he showed up and how much worse it would make things.

Instead of calling him, I email a few quick lines:

Thanks for the message, but don’t worry — you don’t have to come back. Mom and I are pretty good at managing these days.

Then I try to talk myself out of caring whether or not he responds.

But when night comes, I fall asleep thinking of his voice, remembering the stories he read to me when I was small.

Zoe

Bao Bao!” Jonah stands in front of me, holding my always-cold hands in his always-warm ones, rocking back and forth. Afternoon light streams in from the bay window in the apartment unit at Little Lambs Village. It’s a nice place — clean and comfortable — but I can’t quite fathom that this is where he lives now. There is a new reality to adjust to, and at the moment, the truth is we might need to see him more desperately than he needs to see us.

“Yeah, I’ve missed you, too, sweetie,” I say. And then I softly sing to him, although the worry that he misses me singing to him, misses me, misses home, puts a wobble in my voice. I sing him “Tonight You Belong to Me,” wishing as always that either of my parents could carry a tune in a bucket, because it’s really meant to be a duet. But Jonah doesn’t mind. He doesn’t know.