Elsie walked next to me the whole time. She didn't hold my hand. But every time I stopped, she stopped, and every time I looked down, she was there.
We drove home in two cars, Carly with Finn and the cooler and the empty cupcake carriers, me with Elsie in the truck that had been sitting in the garage for seven weeks. Elsie sat in the back in her booster seat holding the lighthouse book on her lap, and halfway down Fortieth Avenue she said, "Dad? Are you going back on the boat?"
"Not for a while," I said.
"How long is a while?"
I looked at her in the mirror. "I don't know yet, Els. I'm going to figure it out."
She nodded and looked out the window, and I could tell she'd heard that kind of answer before.
My phone buzzed twice while I was carrying the cooler in from Carly's car. The first was a text from a number I didn't know. It said: Galen, this is Shauna Vang, Kou's wife, our Leo is in Finn's class. I'm so sorry to bother you. I was filming Leo at the cupcake table this morning and I didn't realize until I watched it back what else I'd caught. I haven't shown it to anybody and I'm not going to. I just thought you should have it. I'm sorry. Then a file came through. Forty-one seconds of footage.
I didn't watch it right away. I went out on the back steps and sat down and watched it there, with the sound turned low. It was mostly Leo, a little dark-haired boy with frosting on his nose, grinning into the phone. But behind him, out of focus at first and then sharp when Shauna's phone readjusted, was the table, and Carly, and Elsie standing at the edge with her hands behind her back. You could hear it all. Can I have a cupcake too. These are for Finn's class. You know that. Can you not make it about you for one day. Okay. Tucker with his frosting chin. Since you asked so nicely. And Elsie turning and walking away across the grass, getting smaller and smaller in the back of the frame while Leo, in the front, licked his fingers and said, "Mommy, look," and the footage ended.
I sat on the steps a long time with the phone in my hand. I wrote back to Shauna: Thank you. I mean it. Please delete it. And she wrote back: Already done.