Duckling Pajamas

By dawn, Boston was a wash of gray and wet brick.

Elliot’s town car rolled into Cambridge with the windows fogged at the edges. He was still in the clothes he had worn onto the jet, collar open, tie loose in his fist. His hands would not stay still.

Naomi’s sister’s house sat a block off Harvard Square, a narrow three-family with a stroller on the front walk and a blue tricycle tipped on its side. He had barely closed the car door before Naomi opened the screen.

She stood in the kitchen light with one hand on the doorframe.

Bella sat in a high chair behind her, duckling pajamas bright against the pale room. There was maple syrup at the corner of her mouth and a plastic fork in her fist. She stared at Elliot as if he were a new toy.

Naomi did not move aside right away.

“Come in,” she said.

Elliot stepped inside. The house smelled like coffee, toast, and baby shampoo. Bella kicked her feet once, then again, making the tray rattle.

“Ellie!” she cried.

It landed in the room with a clean, brutal force.

Elliot stopped.

Bella grinned, syrup shining on her lip, and pointed at him with her fork. “Ellie man.”

Naomi’s fingers tightened on the edge of the counter.

Bella leaned forward, eager, and Elliot bent without thinking. She reached out and patted his cheek with one sticky hand.

His jaw locked. His eyes burned. He covered her tiny fingers with his own and held still like that, as if any sudden motion might break the moment.

Naomi watched them from across the kitchen.

“She does that when she likes somebody,” she said.

“She knows me,” he said.

Naomi’s mouth shifted. “She knows the nickname.”

Elliot looked at the stuffed elephant clipped to Bella’s high chair, one ear bent from chewing. Ellie.

He had bought that elephant years ago in a campus bookstore after Naomi laughed at him for overthinking a gift. He had called himself an idiot, and she had called him Ellie under her breath, soft enough that he kept it.

Bella thumped the tray. “Eee!”

Naomi lifted Bella out of the chair and set her on her hip. Bella tucked her thumb into her mouth, then leaned to peer at Elliot over Naomi’s shoulder.

“We need to talk,” Naomi said.

Not angry. Not soft.

Just exact.

Elliot nodded once. He had expected lawyers. He had expected doors shut in his face.

He had not expected his daughter to call him by a name only one woman had ever used for him.

Naomi carried Bella toward the living room, and Elliot followed.

The gray light in the windows made everything look temporary. Naomi stopped beside the sofa and shifted Bella higher on her hip.

“This doesn’t get handled with one answer,” she said. “If you’re here to ask what happens now, I need you to hear me all the way through.”

Elliot looked at Bella’s small hand curled in Naomi’s sweater.

Then he said, “I’m listening.”

Naomi drew a breath, and the room changed before she spoke.