Page 27 of Everything For Love

“You’ll be mad.”

“I doubt it.”

“I thought it would be fun to live here but I miss my old room and my friends, but I like Hanneli and I really love Talisa. And Mommy is here.”

Mommy can go home, too.

“I know,” I tell her. “I miss a lot of things back home, too. Maybe we should talk to Mommy about all of us moving back.”

Amelie rests her head on my shoulder and grows quiet. I hold her, swaying back and forth, taking in the moment before the attitude returns.

“Daddy?”

“Amelie?”

“I want to go home.”

“Okay, baby.”

* * *

That night,after we’ve called Mack and tucked Amelie in, Aubrey and I crawl into bed. It’s been baby steps, but we’re at least sharing a bed now. And while I’d love to be making love to my wife every night, our sex life hasn’t returned. We had a week of rekindling sex, but by the next week it had tapered off and I’m back to feeling like a stranger in her life. I know she’s tired and her mind races with the horrors she’s seen during the day, but being intimate, being taken care of, should assuage those thoughts.

I lie on my side, with one hand under my pillow and the other in the middle, hoping she grabs it and pulls me to her. I have no choice but to let her lead, let her dictate how things are going to go. The rejection stings.

“Aubs?” I say her name in the darkness.

“Yeah?”

Finding the words to bring this up are hard. I start to question myself, wondering if there was a time before we crawled into bed that I could have dropped the bomb our daughter isn’t happy and wants to go home.

“When I came home from work, Amelie was crying in her room. She told me she hasn’t got any friends and asked me to call some parents and tell them their kids have to be friends with her. She told me she’s not happy here, Aubs.”

“She’s ten,” Aubrey says. “She’ll adjust.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Why isn’t it, Nick? If we had moved for your job or sold our house and moved to a new town, she would’ve had to switch schools. The same shit would be going on.”

Aubrey has a point.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

The bedside light switches on and Aubrey sits up. Even though most of the light is on her side, I can see her glaring at me. Slowly, I sit up and mentally prepare for the fight we’re about to have.

“I’m sorry,” I say again. “When I saw her like that, I should’ve thought of how things could very well be different if we had moved for other reasons.”

“Right, but you blamed me instead.”

“I didn’t blame you for anything.”

“Right. I’m sure you told her that she needs to hold her head high and face adversity, to put herself out there and try to make new friends, to maybe go to the dance class she wanted to take or stay after school and do one of the programs.”

Aubrey looks at me pointedly.

“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t thinking about those things. I saw the tears?—”

“And made me the bad guy.”

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