“Can I hold her?”
“Yes.”
I placed Clara carefully in her arms.
Nancy sat on the couch and rocked her.
She didn’t tell me how I should be feeding her.
She didn’t complain that I had waited three weeks.
She didn’t ask when she would be allowed to babysit.
She just held her granddaughter.
Clara opened her eyes briefly, stared in Nancy’s general direction, then closed them again.
“She’s beautiful,” Nancy whispered.
“I know.”
“She has your nose.”
“Everybody says that.”
Nancy smiled.
Then, very quietly, she said, “Your father would have loved her.”
The words caught me.
Victor’s presence three weeks earlier might have stirred up old memories. Becoming a grandmother might have done it. Maybe she had simply been thinking about my father.
I didn’t ask.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think he would have.”
After a while, Nancy handed Clara back without being asked.
We sat at the kitchen table for almost two hours.
We did not dissect the confrontation.
Nancy did not offer a perfect apology.
I did not demand one.
Instead, we talked about ordinary things.
Krista’s oldest losing a tooth.
A new pediatric clinic opening near my office.
The couch taking nearly six weeks to arrive.
Nancy complained that her grocery store had stopped carrying the brand of canned tomatoes she preferred.
I told her I had already ordered the wrong size diapers twice.
At one point, Clara started fussing in the bassinet.
Nancy looked toward her and then at me.
She waited.
That mattered.
“Would you like to pick her up?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Only then did she stand.
Later, when Nancy was ready to leave, she picked up her empty casserole dish and carried it toward the front door.
She stopped beside Clara’s nursery.
The door was open.
Nancy looked at the sage green walls.
“That color is nice.”
“Thank you.”
“You picked it?”
“I did.”
She nodded.
No correction.
No suggestion.
No explanation of what she would have chosen.
She walked to the front door.
Her hand hovered near the knob, and for a moment I wondered whether the old pattern was about to return in some small way.
Instead, she looked back at me.
“I’ll call before I come next time.”
I held Clara against my shoulder.
“Okay.”
Nancy opened the door and stepped onto the porch.
Halfway down the walk, she turned.
“Maybe Saturday after next?”
“Call me Friday.”
She nodded.
Then she continued to her car.
Behind me, Clara made a sleepy little sound and pressed her cheek into my shoulder. I closed the door and carried her back toward the nursery.
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Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.