Part 2 of 3

She’d learned to ride a bicycle in our driveway. She’d ruined a birthday cake by confusing salt and sugar. She’d brought home friends, argued about curfews, and eventually moved into her own apartment.

Yet the chapters I’d read were almost entirely about Maisie.

I looked at the stack of pages.

Had Arthur spent all those years imagining the daughter we’d lost while our living daughter was growing up beside us?

The thought made me uncomfortable.

I picked up the manuscript and drove to Aurora’s apartment.

THE QUESTION MY DAUGHTER HAD BEEN AFRAID TO ASK

Aurora opened her door looking alarmed.

“Mom? What’s wrong?”

“Your father wrote something I never knew about.”

She invited me inside and offered coffee.

I placed the manuscript on her kitchen table.

“Dad wrote this?”

“He did.”

She read the title.

“About Maisie?”

“About what her life might have been.”

Aurora sat down and turned several pages.

At first, she smiled. Then she grew quiet.

“I wish he’d shown me.”

“Why?”

She looked up.

“Because I would’ve liked to know more about her.”

I reached for her hand.

“Honey, Maisie was gone before you were born. We didn’t get to know enough about her either.”

“I know, Mom. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what are you saying?”

She closed the manuscript.

“Why was it always so hard to talk about her?”

I frowned.

“We talked about Maisie.”

“Not really.”

“Aurora, that’s not fair.”

She looked at me steadily.

“When I was six, I found her photograph in Dad’s drawer. Remember?”

I remembered.

Maisie was wearing a yellow duck-patterned outfit, her tiny fingers wrapped around Arthur’s thumb.

“You told me she was my sister,” Aurora continued. “Then you put the picture away.”

“I didn’t want to upset you.”

“I was six, Mom. I just wanted to know whether she looked like me.”

I felt myself becoming defensive.

“Your father and I did our best.”

“I know you did. But I’m trying to tell you what it felt like, and you keep explaining why you did it.”

I looked away.

“I should go.”

“Mom, please don’t leave just because we’re having a difficult conversation.”

But I gathered the pages and left anyway.

Halfway home, I pulled into a grocery store parking lot.

I remembered little Aurora holding her sister’s photograph.

“Would she have played with me?” she’d asked.

“Probably, sweetheart.”

Then I’d taken the picture and put it back in the drawer.

I’d thought I was protecting Aurora from sadness.

I hadn’t considered that my silence might make her feel she wasn’t allowed to ask about her own sister.

I reached for my phone.

“Mom?” she answered.

“I shouldn’t have walked out. I’m sorry.”

She was quiet.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you,” I added.

“I know.”

“Would you come for dinner tomorrow? I’d like to hear the rest.”

After a pause, she agreed.

I looked at Arthur’s manuscript on the passenger seat.

I’d spent the afternoon trying to understand what my husband had written.

Now I needed to understand what my daughter had been trying to tell me.

PART 2: THE LIFE WE DID HAVE

Aurora arrived the following evening carrying an apple pie.

“I brought dessert,” she announced.

“I made chicken.”

“Good. I was worried you were going to serve Dad’s manuscript with a side of potatoes.”

I laughed and took the pie from her.

We ate at the kitchen table where she’d done homework for years. At first, we talked about her job, the neighbor’s new puppy, and whether I should finally replace the old refrigerator.

Then I put down my fork.

“Tell me what you remember about Maisie.”

Aurora looked surprised.

“Honestly?”

“Especially honestly.”

She pushed a few potatoes around her plate.

“I remember Dad getting quiet every June. And I remember you avoiding the photo albums.”

“Sometimes I couldn’t bear to look at them.”

“I figured that out when I got older.”

“What did you think when you were little?”

She hesitated.

“Sometimes I thought you wished our family had turned out differently.”

I reached across the table.

“Aurora, we never wished you away.”

“I believe you, Mom. I’m just telling you what it felt like.”

I forced myself not to interrupt.

She told me she’d once drawn a picture of all four of us: Arthur, me, Maisie, and herself.

Then she’d thrown it away because she was afraid seeing Maisie in the drawing would make me cry.

“I wanted to ask about her,” Aurora said. “But every time I brought her up, you looked so sad. Eventually, I stopped.”

I remembered the photographs I’d hidden and the conversations I’d changed whenever Maisie’s name came up.

I’d believed I was shielding my daughter from grief.

She’d been trying to shield me from it too.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Aurora squeezed my fingers.

“I know you loved me, Mom. I just wish we’d talked about her more.”

“So do I.”

After dinner, we carried our coffee into the living room.

Without the brown couch, the room looked strangely large. Two armchairs faced the television, with an empty space between them.

Aurora glanced around.

“Still looks weird without Dad’s couch.”

“I keep expecting him to come downstairs and complain that I’ve moved his things.”

She smiled.

“He’d probably say you should’ve charged fifty dollars.”

“He’d say I practically gave away a family heirloom.”

We laughed.

Then I told her about the notebooks I’d found.

“Your father spent twelve years writing about Maisie. I can’t understand why he never told me.”

Aurora considered that.

“Maybe he was afraid it would hurt you.”

“But why write all those years of her life?”

“Maybe he wanted to know her too.”

I looked toward the empty space where the couch had stood.

“I suppose I never thought of it that way.”

Aurora set down her coffee.

“Mom, Dad wasn’t very good at talking about difficult things. Remember how he fixed the porch swing after you two had that big argument?”

I smiled faintly.

“He spent an entire Saturday working on it.”

“And you were still mad at him Sunday.”

“Because fixing the swing wasn’t an apology.”

“Exactly. Maybe writing was how he dealt with things he couldn’t say.”

Her words stayed with me.

When she left, she asked whether she could read the rest of the manuscript after I’d finished.

“Of course,” I told her.

She hugged me at the door.

“And Mom? You don’t have to have every answer.”

“That’s fortunate, because I’m running short.”

After she drove away, I returned to Arthur’s desk and opened the manuscript again.

THE CHAPTER I HADN’T EXPECTED

I continued reading where I’d stopped.

Maisie went to college. She called home because she’d ruined her laundry. Arthur imagined her getting engaged, arguing about wedding flowers, and asking him to walk her down the aisle.

Then I turned another page.

The chapter title made me sit up.

Aurora’s First Bicycle.

I read the first paragraph twice.

This wasn’t an imagined scene.

It was something that had actually happened.

Aurora was seven when I decided she was ready to ride without training wheels. Arthur thought we should wait another week, but I insisted.

She fell twice before finally making it across the driveway.

Arthur had written about standing near the garage while I ran beside her, cheering so loudly that the neighbors came outside.

“Did you see me, Daddy?” Aurora had shouted.

“Every second, sweetheart.”

Arthur had described the way I laughed when Aurora finally stopped, breathless and triumphant.