Page 100 of For The Weekend
She points to each figure in her crayon drawing. “That’s you and me and Steve and Eloise.”
Of course. Who else would have yellow hair and a pink dress with brown…spots all over it. “What are those?”
“Cimanin rolls,” she says like I should’ve known, and I guess I should have.
My throat tightens, and I scoop Mazie up into a hug. “I love it.”
She smacks my shoulder a few times. “Can you hang it up?”
“Yeah.”
“In a frame?”
“If that’s what you want.”
“Can we go see Eloise now? I want a cimanin roll.”
“Not today. You have your friend’s party.” And I have some groveling to do.
“Oh yeah! Well, let’s go! Hurry up.”
I purchase the book Mazie picked out for her present then choose to carry her to the car because I feel torn in two, and my daughter is a good Band-Aid. She takes the picture back and tells me, “We hafta hang it up because we don’t have any pictures of us in the house, and we’re supposed to have family photos in our house.”
“Eloise isn’t technically a part of our family.”
My daughter shrugs. “She should be. Sadie’s mommy came in to be the surprise reader the other day, and Eloise is a lot prettier than her. And I want Eloise to come and be a surprise reader, but she has to be my mommy to do that.”
A lightning strike would have surprised me less.
“You like Eloise that much?” I ask, buckling her into her car seat.
“I love her. You do too, right? How comes she hasn’t been to our house in a long time? Like a whole year!”
“It’s been a few days,” I correct and close the door, feeling suddenly hot.
I crack my window when I settle behind the wheel. “I think she’ll come over again. Hopefully.”
“And she can be my mommy?”
I eye Mazie’s reflection in the rearview mirror, unsure of what to say. She has a mother, although Mazie hasn’t seen her in over a year, and not too often before that. But hearing her desire to be a family with Eloise is hard for me to ignore when it’s what I want too.
I turn to face Mazie. “I don’t know about her being your mommy. We’ll have to talk to her about that.”
“Today?”
“No, not today.”
“Tomorrow?”
I heave out a sigh. “Probably not tomorrow either.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure, Maze. That’s a big conversation, and me and Eloise need to talk about adult stuff before that.”
She huffs and folds her arms. “Don’t take too long. We have to ask her before somebody else does.”
I start the ignition. My daughter’s right. Can’t wait too long.
