Page 48 of Sunshine
“Do you remember now?” she asks.
“I think so?” I frown at our surroundings, trying to recall the last time I was here. I know I was, but I can’t recall when or why or with who.
“Your mom brought us here once,” Poppy says. “I think Daisy and I were five or six at the time.”
“Really?” Guilt tugs on my heart, knowing that for whatever reason, a hike with my mom is a core memory for Poppy but not for me. “How do you remember?”
Poppy scrapes back her loose reddish-blonde waves and secures them into a high ponytail. “I remember lots of things about my Davenport days. Much more than how I spent my time with Mona.” She takes a few determined steps toward the path. “Come on.”
“You want to hike?” We’re both wearing sneakers—not the best footwear for hiking in wet January weather, even if today is mild and the sky is a clear blue. “Now? In those shoes?”
She puts her hands on her hips and cocks her head, giving me a tolerantly amused smile. “We won’t go far. If I remember right, there’s a little ridge about twenty minutes down the path with amazing views over the valley. Let’s just take a quick look, and then we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming.”
I squint up at the sky, then down at my jeans and gray long-sleeved Henley, and shrug. “What the hell?”
“That’s the spirit.”
Against the odds, Poppy is right about there being a ridge along the path, and we reach it after less than fifteen minutes.
“Hm. Guess our legs are longer now,” she says, stopping at the edge of a rise that looks out over thick oak woodlands, rolling green hills, distant meadows, and closer glassy-topped ponds. In a few more weeks, wildflowers will carpet the ground with color, and spring will warm the air.
Poppy takes a deep breath of the fresh Sonoma air and sighs happily like this is some sort of heaven. Her eyes close, and she turns her face toward the sun.
I don’t slow down to look at the world much these days, but something about Poppy’s willingness to pause and breathe makes me want to do the same. I close my eyes and inhale. Again. Then again. Out here, in the quiet and the stillness, mythoughts mellow, and my muscles relax like they’ve been waiting for this moment forever.
I’m not sure how long we stand there, but the sun is a little higher in the sky when Poppy speaks into the silence. “Are you glad we came?”
I inhale a deep lungful of air and release it with a nod. “Yeah.”
“Ready to go?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay.”
Though it was foolish to want to be alone with Poppy today, even if only for an hour, the impulse to reach out and take her hand is too much to resist. I slip my hand into hers, entwining her fingers in mine, and the cool touch of her palm does that thing only she can do—soothe me and excite me all at once.
Maybe I’m imagining things, but I can almost feel the memory of my mother here. Kind of like those weeks and months just after she died when I’d walk into a room where her floral perfume still lingered in the air. I know it’s ridiculous, but that’s how this moment feels. Something—someone—wanted me to stop for a second. I’ve been barreling toward an unreachable horizon for years, everything in my life driving me to keep my daughter happy and healthy and safe, and there’s been no opportunity for stillness.
And now, unexpectedly, I’m not moving. I’m standing here basking in the sunshine. I brush my thumb across the back of Poppy’s hand. Basking inhersunshine.
“Thanks for dragging me out here,” I tell her. “I needed this.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Do you really remember more about your childhood with us than you do with your mom?” I wonder aloud.
“Yeah. I mean, I spent so much time with you guys, and it was always fun.” I wonder if she means to hold my hand tighter as she goes on. “Mona was always busy with one thing or another—a passion project, a business idea, a man, a spiritual awakening, an emotional crisis—that I didn’t always feel like her top priority. But your mom and dad were good to me, and you were always doing things that, in hindsight, weren’t particularly wild but felt like adventures. Camping and hiking and making pancakes at midnight.”
The sadness I feel about Poppy’s relationship with her mother and the parallels with Izzy and Annalise are temporarily nudged aside when a memory floats to the surface of my mind. My mom flipping batter in the middle of the night. My dad waking up because of the noise, and instead of getting mad, he starts slicing strawberries.
“She did make life fun,” I agree before regret passes over me. “I’ve never taken Izzy hiking or camping. I’ve never made her pancakes at midnight.”
“You haven’t done those thingsyet,” Poppy corrects me. “She’s only six. There’s plenty of time to have those adventures with her.”
“You know what the hardest thing is about being a dad? The feeling that no matter what I do, it’s never enough. And nevergoodenough. Making decisions about Izzy on my own. Knowing I’m all she has. It’s hard.”
I clench my jaw and glare out over the landscape, wondering if somewhere out there, Annalise is in my line of sight. Can she feel my frustration and disappointment and anger? I chose this. I know that. But I didn’t know what was ahead. I was a cocky kid thinking I could do it all, but the life I was about to build for Izzy didn’t include the mother she should have had.
