“Why did she leave us?”
I gulped. This was the first time Noah had ever spoken about Daphne directly. This was the first time we were having a real conversation about her. Frankly, I had expected to have to deal with this when Noah was much older.
“She didn’t want to leave us, Noah,” I said. “She didn’t have a choice.”
“A choice?” he repeated like he didn’t understand.
“That’s when you have to do something, whether you like it or not.”
“Like Ted?”
“Ted?” I asked, trying to figure out who that was.
“Ted lived in class with us,” Noah told me. “We fed him and gave him water, but one day he wasn’t moving. So we had to dig a hole in the dirt and put him in it.”
“He was the hamster,” I said, remembering Noah telling me about Ted a few months ago.
“Uh-huh.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s the same thing,” I said, completely unsure if I was saying the right thing. “I’m sure Ted didn’t want to leave, either…like your mom.”
“Why is she wea
ring that?” Noah asked, looking towards her picture.
I stared at Daphne for a moment. I remembered the day I had hung up that frame. I had tried desperately to find a shot of her smiling, but that didn’t leave me with very many options. She was wearing her uniform in the picture I had finally chosen. Even though she wasn’t smiling, there was contentment on her face that gave me some measure of peace when I looked at it.
“That was her uniform,” I told Noah. “She was in the army, like me. That was how we met.”
“And then you married?”
“We did,” I nodded. “And then we had you.”
“And then Mommy died?”
He said it so bluntly, as though he had been saying it for years. I had been doing my best the whole time to avoid using that word, thinking it would be too confronting for Noah. But I was probably just projecting.
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s not fair,” he said suddenly. “Tina has two mommies, and I don’t even have one.”
“I know, buddy,” I said gently. “It’s not fair; you’re right.”
Noah looked at me for a second, and then he turned back to his blocks. I felt even more drained after that conversation and considered the possibility of hiring a live-in nanny. Perhaps Noah would benefit from having a woman around all the time. He was obviously missing the feminine energy in his life.
Again, I felt guilty. Was this because of how much I worked? Noah was right; he spent more time with Janet than he did with me. He didn’t have a mother, and he had an absent father to boot—that couldn’t be good for any child.
I felt extremely inadequate at that moment, and I knew I would need to reconsider a few things if I was going to make a difference in Noah’s life. My goal had always been to do my utmost to make sure Noah didn’t miss Daphne’s presence in his life too much, and I had obviously failed miserably at that.
“What are you building, buddy?” I asked, forcing a smile onto my face.
“A ship,” he replied immediately. “Like the ones you sail.”
“I see,” I said. “That’s a nice ship.”
“Thank you,” he replied politely.
I leaned back and watched Noah at his games. I wondered how different our lives would have been had Daphne lived to watch her son grow up. I remembered the first few months after Noah’s birth and felt that familiar darkness engulf me. It had been a very difficult time. And, it had been even worse because I had been completely unprepared for Daphne’s reaction to the birth. I think she had been, too.