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“Can you tell me what’s making you upset, so I can understand,” Camilla says, very gently, but it still doesn’t seem to break through the hot anger on Nona’s face. It’s not every day you get to see the usually so cheery girl this upset, but those aren't the days she particularly looks forward to. “Are you upset because I made you eat lunch?”
“No,” Nona frowns, a bit indignant. She rubs her eyes then, again, with her palms, this repeated gesture as a poor replacement for self-soothing, shutting her eyes firmly closed. Her cheeks are getting more and more red—Camilla fears for fever, but she couldn’t tell for sure.
“Alright, you—Nona, alright, I see,” Camilla says, as softly as possible, grabbing her by the wrists to get her to stop. “Let me have a look.”
“No!” Nona exclaims, flinging her hands away from her grasp. “No, no—”
“Are we going back to baby mode again, Nona?” she sighs, recalling a time where the one syllable word was precisely all that Nona could say. It felt like ages ago, but sometimes when Nona’s in an irritated mood, all higher linguistic functions she’d learned seem to escape her vocabulary.
“No!” Nona says again, with a hint of embarrassment to it. Still, it’s all that she repeats, even when Camilla keeps trying to pull her close, tries to soothe her away from the edge of a meltdown with all that she could do now—the weighted blanket is across the house, in Nona’s room, and the caterpillar jumpsuit Harrow and Gideon had gotten for her last Christmas, and that inflatable pea pod—”Nona, Nona—”
“Cam?” Her father’s voice calls out from the hallway—oh, she’d forgotten that Miles had been to come by earlier to deliver her bachelor’s degree documents. “Is everything alright, love?”
“Yes, we’re just—” Camilla sighs harshly. She’s barely a parent to Nona—a caretaker, yes, but not a parent— but it still feels somewhat shameful for her father to see her fail so terribly at calming Nona down, for some reason. She’s had Nona halfway in her embrace when her father steps inside the living room, carrying the little calico cat plush from her early childhood in his hand—oh, great, he’d brought her some mementos, too.
She glares at him. “Dad, you said you weren’t going to—”
“I know, I know, but—Callie!” He exclaims, shaking the little cat’s head between his fingers. “You loved her so much!”
“Yes, when I was four. ”
“No, you brought her on the first day of school, I remember,” he gives her a slight frown when he comes by to approach them on the couch. “And what’s the matter with you, missy?”
“No! ” Nona exclaims almost immediately, tugging away her hands from Camilla’s grasp with such force that she tumbled over backwards right into Miles’ arms, which he’d caught her, right on time.
“Ooo-kay…” He says, hesitant at first, but before Camilla could let out a strained warning of dad— he’s already wrapped his arms around Nona with a firmness that Camilla could only recall from her own toddler years, and the occasional bad days she’d had in adolescence. “Oh, honey, alright. Someone’s cranky, huh?”
“Dad ,” Camilla manages to warn this time, very softly. “She’s having a—”
“I know what she needs,” Miles dismisses, placing his arms under Nona’s to better support her, the other moving to pet her hair. “Just a bit tired, aren’t you, darling?”
Camilla could only watch with half awe, half startled surprise as Nona stops squirming in his embrace and instead leans her head to rest against his shoulder, her body gradually relaxing in his lap as if a switch had been clicked—just like that.
“When you were a kid,” he starts, barely more than a whisper as he runs his palm back and forth alongs Nona's shoulders, “you’d always get so cranky when you’re sleepy, and this would always calm you down.”
Camilla isn’t sure what to say to that, so she stares at her father for a while, and the streaks of gray hair cascading over his forehead, and the way his fingers run through Nona’s hair.
“Could you help get me a cold compress, Cam?” Her father’s hushed voice shook her back. “For her eyes, I think they’re a bit puffy and sore.”
“Course,” she only says, and takes off towards the kitchen to find a washcloth and some ice water. Her mind is blank when she runs the washcloth under the sink, the soft fizzing of the water reminding her of a simpler time when all she’d needed to do to fix all the wrongs in the world was to climb into her fathers’ lap.
She still wants to, some days. Still wants to hear her fathers’ voice from the receiver and whine about her day. Still wants to nuzzle her nose against the dip in their collarbones. Instead, she walks back to the couch with a wrung-out washcloth and watches her father press them against her reddened eyes, coaxing Nona to close her eyes and soothes her with the slight bounce of his lap. Reminds her of—
“Remember, when you were her age?” Miles whispers to her softly, careful not to disturb the girl in his lap. "So clingy, just like this."
“I was doing advanced calculus in university when I was her age,” Camilla raises her eyebrows.
Her father clicks her tongue. "You know what I mean.”
“Yes,” Camilla murmurs. “I remember.”
She stares at the little cat on the coffee table for a long while, as if she stared hard enough, she could return to when she used to clutch that plush with both arms and make it fit right in between. She missed that, having two strong arms to return to at the end of a tiring day; having a big sister to protect her, to comfort her, to care for her.
And now she’s the big sister.
“Come here,” her father says. “And Callie, too.”
Camilla let the slightest smile tug on the corner of her mouth and lets herself return to her father’s arms, just for today.
(And Callie, too.)