The Snow Angel (26 page)

Mitch nods absently. A part of him wishes that he could place her and have a real conversation. She’s obviously hurting. Looking for something that he can’t give her. But a bigger part of him wishes that she would just go away. It’s Christmas Eve, and the sense of longing that grips his chest is so overwhelming he can hardly think of anything else.

“I wanted you to know that I understand,” she says, taking a few steps into the room. If she reached out, and if Mitch reached out for her, they could just touch fingertips. He doesn’t mind her proximity. He can see the fine muscles in her neck work as she swallows and goes on. “I
understand what it’s like to love someone who probably doesn’t merit that love. A long, long time ago you told me that everyone deserves …” she trails off. “But you don’t remember that, do you? Just like you don’t remember me.”

It would probably be polite to assure her that he does, in fact, remember, but it would be a lie, and Mitch feels incapable of such pretense right now. Not tonight. Not on Christmas Eve, when he’s clinging to a wish so distant he can hardly make out the contours of it from where he stands. He shakes his head.

“I didn’t think you would.” She looks sad. Absently, she raises her fingertips to her mouth and allows them to trace the curve of her bottom lip. It’s an unconscious movement, a mannerism born of habit. All at once Mitch knows that she was a nail biter. When she was younger? In another life? Does it really matter? The hazy recollection is gone as quickly as it came, and in its place is the nagging impatience he feels at her unwanted company. This woman is interrupting his vigil.

“For whatever it’s worth,” she says, “I came here to tell you that I forgive you.”

“You forgive me?” This is unexpected. Mitch tilts his head as he regards her, wondering what in the world he did to warrant a late-night, Christmas Eve absolution. He’s about to tell the unfamiliar woman that she must have the wrong guy, surely she’s mixed him up with someone else,
when the sound of footsteps in the hall pulls him up short. There is the sound of a child’s laughter, and then a rainstorm of light knocks on the door. His door. Mitch is so startled he can’t speak.

He doesn’t have to. The door eases open a crack and a white-haired man pokes his head through. “Mitch?” he says. “Can we come in for a moment?”

We? Mitch nods, barely able to control the motion of his own head. In turns it feels heavy as a stone and light as one of the snowflakes that drift outside his window. All Mitch can think is: I heard laugher. A little girl’s laughter.

And then, before he can toss up one last wordless prayer, the door opens all the way and she is there. A cry escapes his lips.

She hasn’t changed a bit. Cherry-pop hair in loose braids, errant curls framing her narrow face. A smattering of freckles dust her nose, and her blue eyes dance with a delight that she doesn’t try to conceal or control. She’s happy. Beautiful and happy, a vision so perfect she must surely be a dream.

But when she sees him, something in her faces changes. She freezes for a moment, and her smile flickers and then fades altogether. Mitch feels as if the room has darkened when she turns her eyes to the floor. Does she hate him? Is she angry for all the times he should have defended her but didn’t? He wants to run to her and take her in his
arms, but before he can do anything, the little girl peeks up at him from between dark lashes, and he realizes that she doesn’t look upset: She looks suddenly shy. Like she wants desperately to reach out to him, but she doesn’t quite dare.

Shy? Why would his own daughter be timid around him? Mitch opens his mouth to say her name, but at that moment the woman steps between them and puts her hands on the girl’s thin shoulders.

“Now is not the time, honey.”

Honey? Why is this strange woman calling his daughter honey?

“But I want to—”

“I said not now.”

“But …” The child bites her lip and sneaks a glance at Mitch. Her eyes are full of things unsaid, and all at once Mitch knows that he is not the only one who has been waiting for this moment. It’s almost more than he can bear. He’s ready to throw the strange woman out of his room, but then the little girl nods obediently and tears her gaze from him.

“May I go outside while I wait?” she asks quietly. “Cooper says that it doesn’t snow in Arizona, and this might be my last chance to play in the snow.”

Mitch doesn’t know who Cooper is or why his little girl cares about whether it snows in Arizona, but it doesn’t
matter. He takes a few tentative steps toward her, and when she doesn’t back away, he dares to take a few more.

“You could make a snow angel,” Mitch whispers tentatively. He clears his throat, tries again. “Do you know how to do that?”

Her smile is feather soft. “My mom taught me how to make them,” she says. “She learned from her dad. I could show you if you’d like.”

Mitch manages to croak, “I’d like that very much.”

They’ve spoken; she isn’t a dream. And yet all Mitch can do is gape. They stand there for what feels like forever, just looking at each other across a distance so small he can hear the faint exhalation of her warm breath. Mitch swallows her in hungry gulps, and she eyes him curiously. Almost as if she’s seeing him for the very first time. Finally, she flashes him a brilliant smile and skips across the space between them to throw her arms around his waist. When she turns her face up, Mitch cups her cheeks, ignoring his own tears. Real men do cry, he decides. And real men tell their daughters how they feel.

He opens his mouth to do just that, to say the words he’s kept inside for so long, but before he can, the woman speaks.

“Go outside and play,” she commands the little girl. “We need some time alone.”

The child sighs a little, but she slips out of Mitch’s arms
and scurries to the door. “Stay right here, okay? I’ll be back in a minute,” she assures him, pausing for a moment with one hand on either side of the doorframe. “Watch me from the window!”

And just like that she’s gone.

“I’ll go with her.” The tall man smiles, exchanging a private look with the woman who is still standing in Mitch’s room.

Mitch is furious that she sent the child away, but he clings to the words that still linger in the room like a promise: I’ll be right back. There is so much he wants to say to her! “Excuse me,” he says, pushing past the woman so he can return to the window. He longs to press his hands against the glass—he doesn’t want to miss a single second.

Instead of leaving, the woman walks quietly across the room and comes to stand beside him. She glances at him, and then touches her fingers to the cold pane of glass, her hand next to his in a parody of togetherness. Mitch doesn’t mean to be rude, but his heart is bursting with the long-awaited realization of his hope, the wish so dear it nearly crushed his heart to dream it. He turns to the woman in exasperation.

“Look,” Mitch says, “I don’t know who you are, but I’ve been waiting … for so long …” his voice splinters and he can’t go on.

“I can’t believe you don’t remember me. After everything …” The woman is crying now, too, and when she faces him he is struck by a sense of familiarity. Something inside him resonates with the slant of her eyes, the high curve of her cheekbone. But the echo is indistinct, and quieted completely when she says, “How could you not remember who I am?”

“I’m sorry.” Mitch makes himself apologize, even though he’s not sorry one bit. Can’t she see that the only thing that matters right now is his little girl? “But I’ve been waiting so long for this day. I’ve prayed that she would come, that my daughter would come and see me one last time. And now she’s here.”

The room goes utterly still. “What?” the woman whispers. “What did you say? That was your daughter? The little girl with the braids?”

“Isn’t she beautiful?”

The woman releases a long, shuddering breath. “Yes,” she says. “She’s beautiful.”

“I’ve missed her so much.”

“You have?”

“She’s with me every minute of every day.” Mitch doesn’t know why he is telling all of this to a woman he doesn’t know, but he can’t seem to stop himself. “I want so badly to tell her …”

“Tell her what?”

“That I’m sorry. I’ve made so many mistakes,” Mitch says. “I haven’t always been there for her in the way that she needs me to be. I work so hard, and sometimes I forget that little girls just need someone to listen. I don’t mean to fall asleep when she’s talking.”

“You don’t?”

“Of course not. And I don’t mean to mess everything up. I wanted her to wear that dress because it made her look so beautiful. You should see her in blue …”

“But—”

“And I should have defended her when her mother said those things, but Bev was hurting, too. All the pain of her childhood came out on our daughter. It was so wrong, but I didn’t know how to stop it.”

“You should have tried,” the woman says quietly.

“I know.” Mitch’s voice breaks. “I should have tried.”

They are silent for a moment, and in the stillness Mitch can feel all the things he wants to say fill his mouth. He’s choking on memories, but though they are bitter, they are also sweet. “I wish that I knew how to connect with her,” he says, “but I always seem to get it wrong. She’s always one step ahead of me, and I’m trailing behind, wondering how I can help her understand that I’m here. And I always will be.”

The woman covers her face with her hands, but a movement at the corner of his vision distracts Mitch. As he
squints into the snowy landscape the child appears. She’s struggling through the deep snow, her face radiant with laughter. Lifting her mittened hands to the sky, she catches a dozen snowflakes, then laps them up like a puppy. She is a pleasure to behold, a little girl on the very brink of her life, the innocence of her youth and the promise of her future woven together in a crown that seems to alight on her curls in the place where the streetlamp casts a pale luster. Mitch could watch her forever, but after a few minutes of kicking up the new-fallen snow, she seems to realize that she’s being watched.

The girl straightens up and turns her attention to the bank of windows. She covers her brow with a mittened hand and squints as if she’s looking for something.

“For me,” Mitch murmurs with a rush of understanding. “She’s looking for me.”

“She’s been looking for you for a very long time,” the woman says. “Let her know you’re watching. Wave at her.”

Mitch does, waggling his fingers until the girl catches sight of him and waves back. Her excitement is a tangible thing, it tingles beneath his skin and fills all the empty places.

“I’ve waited so long to tell her …” Mitch trails off, lost in his own reverie.

“To tell her what? That you’re sorry?”

“That I love her.”

The woman inches her hand along the glass until Mitch can feel the warmth of her skin. He’s surprised when she takes a deep breath and then covers his wrinkled knuckles with her own soft palm, soothing the arthritic knots of bone and flesh that haven’t been held in more years than he can remember. It’s a beautiful gesture, a moment of such unexpected sweetness Mitch makes a little sound in the back of his throat. He’s been so lonely.

“She loves you, too,” the woman says, squeezing.

Mitch can’t help it, he catches her fingers in his own, interlocking them because it feels so good to hang on to someone. To be anchored to the world by the precious weight of another person. “How do you know?” he asks.

When she laughs, the sound is soft and light as air. She catches his eye in the reflection of the windowpane, and in the background he can still see the little girl making angels in the snow. “She loves you. She told me so.”