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The call was the closest to frantic that Jack Abbot had ever approached. One moment, Samira was elbow deep in sudsy dish water; the next she was rushing to dry off her soapy arms because her phone had rung with Jack’s caller ID twice in a row. He never called in such quick succession and it immediately put her on high alert. When she picked up the call she knew she had been right to suspect something out of the ordinary.
“Robby’s Mom fell again, I’ve gotta head over to help and the sitter isn’t answering,” Each of his words fell over the other in pure panic.
“Jack- Jack, I’m coming over. I’m putting on my shoes now,” She said, digging through her dresser for shorts, a shirt free of stains, and a bra, “I’ll be over in ten.”
“Alright, I- geez, Mohan, you have no idea how thankful I- Mia?! Mia, c’mere,” His voice faded in the moment before Samira ended the call. After a sprint through her apartment building and down to her car she made it to Abbot’s house in 13 minutes- record time. Every minute the dread of the situation compounded on itself. Knowing what the woman meant to Jack, she wanted dementia-addled Mrs. Robinavitch to get to the hospital and be as okay as somebody in her position could manage.
And, of course, there was the ‘Mia’ of it all.
Samira had yet to meet Mia. She saw plenty of photos and videos and already loved the little girl for the way her father’s eyes lit up just from thinking about her. At times she even felt that she knew the girl based purely on how much she’d been told of her. Mia was adventurous when it came to food, a voracious reader, bilingual, a piano player, and eerily intelligent for her age. She hated praying mantises and car rides. She was a loud baby until her mom died and, in her grief, turned into a reserved (at least, in comparison to how she had been before) little girl in the year and a half since.
To say that Jack seemed fiercely protective of Mia would be a gross understatement. Considering the manner in which his wife had been ripped from him, and that Mia making it out of the same car accident was nothing short of miraculous, it was impossible to blame him. They had been officially dating for 3 months after a year and a half of dancing around their feelings and he had only just begun to float the idea of meeting his daughter. From their very first date he made it clear that his loyalties would always lie with Mia and that Samira was perfectly free to walk away, because he had as little interest in merely hooking up with Samira as he did with prioritizing anyone over his daughter. Samira adored it. She had also become terrified of the fact that Mia’s opinion of her could, understandably, mean losing Jack.
In her mind, Samira always pictured she’d be wearing a classy dress when she met Mia. It would probably be at a public place, like an ice cream date for all three of them. Her and Jack even considered Samira coincidentally running into them at the playground that was totally right next to her house, while she was on the daily walks that she definitely took. She didn’t think it would happen like this: running inside their home with unwashed hair and no makeup, lint-covered leggings, and a crew neck with a hole in the left armpit. Jack darted to her before the front door was closed, wallet in hand.
“She knows her routine but I wrote it out on the fridge for you just in case. No ice cream after 7:30 and a small portion unless she's giving you trouble, then you can give her more. If I’m not back you can sleep in my room or the guest room, my card’s on the table for dinner and whatever you want. I’ll talk to you as soon as I can,” He rushed, holding either of her arms and finally stopping to stand still and look her dead in the eye. “Don’t take it personal that I’m saying this but if you for some reason hit, bathe, yell-”
“Never, Jack,” Samira told him with a solemn nod, pressing a chaste kiss to his lips before shooing him out the door. Their eyes locked for one moment, and the I love yous died on their tongues at the newfound anxiety Mia might overhear. Jack walked them to the dining room where 4-year-old Mia sat; not a picture or a video, but in the flesh.
“Mia, this is Samira, dad’s… friend. You be good for her while I help Uncle Robby. Remember our talk?” Mia looked up and wiped Goldfish dust from her chin while she nodded. “Good. I might not be home in time to tuck you in tonight, so I need you to be a big girl in case that happens. Samira’s in charge.”
Samira gave a tiny wave even though Mia was focused on Jack, who now hurried back to Mia to wrap her in his arms and kissed her chubby cheek. “Grandma’s gonna be okay, Mia. Daddy loves you very much. Gimme a kiss,” Mia grabbed his face with both hands and pressed a kiss to his nose.
“Bye daddy, I love you,” She waved all the way until the front door finally shut. Only then did the little girl turn her attention to Samira with a blank stare. It evoked the exact same feeling in Samira that standing onstage for the fourth grade spelling bee had; exposed, underprepared, terrified. She was never meant for the stage, never excelled at being on display.
“Mia! Can I… I can call you Mia, right?” Samira asked. She slowly approached the chair adjacent to Mia’s and sank into it. “I’m so happy I get to meet you! Your, ah, your… daddy, talks about you all the time. I see you’re eating Goldfish, that’s yummy, I love Gold-”
“Are you daddy’s girlfriend?”
Samira’s mouth snapped shut with lightning speed. Was she supposed to answer? In Jack’s briefing he hadn’t exactly mentioned it, and the last thing she wanted to do was mess with boundaries lest it mess up Mia or lead to a breakup. How much did Mia know about her? And why didn’t she consider that the Jack Abbot stare was genetic?
“I… hang out with your dad.”
“Do you kiss him?”
“Let’s not talk about that!” Samira clapped her hands together and hopped out of her seat. “Wanna order pizza for dinner?”
“Okay,” Mia’s eyes narrowed, and she mentally logged Samira’s avoidance of the question. For pizza, though? She could move on. “But I want stuffed crust.”
Two hours later they sat in the living room, stuffed full of stuffed crust and coloring with the fancy crayon pack that Samira was always secretly jealous of others for having. Mia was well behaved and reserved, just as promised, which saddened Samira as much as it relieved her. Would she be so well-behaved if she wasn’t grieving her mother? Was this her personality, or was it the grief? Speaking of her dad’s marriage:
“Are you dating?”
Samira opted to feign ignorance. “Dating? Like… in general?”
“My dad.”
“Do you want ice cream?” Again, Mia stared her down, but the desire for ice cream won out (just as Samira hoped it would) and quieted the coloring girl back down for twenty minutes. This went on; three more times, Mia asked if Samira was dating Jack. Twice, Samira deflected with candy, and then by offering to put on a movie. The third time, however, Mia smacked her paper down onto the carpet and marched over to Samira with wide, teary eyes, much to the horror of her babysitter.
“Why won’t anyone tell me anything?” She asked with equal parts frustration and hopelessness, voice cracking. God, Samira was so going to get broken up with for making her boyfriend’s kid cry. “First my mom dies, then dad is super sad and cries all the time, then he’s happy again and he’s gone during the day sometimes and he won’t tell me why. Nobody tells me anything! I just wanna know!”
Samira felt her heart splinter and crack for the girl. In an instant she was off of the couch and kneeling in front of her, taking her by the shoulders. “Hey! Hey, Mia,” The little girl opened her eyes; her propensity for staring was Jack’s, but her chocolatey brown eyes must have belonged to her mother. “You dad and I are dating. I’m his girlfriend, okay? We just,” Samira deflated a bit, sighing and closing her eyes. This was not her place, and Jack was going to break up with her for overstepping. At least she wouldn’t have to have that conversation with the girl.
“It can be really hard for kids when parents start to date again and we didn’t want to hurt you. Your dad really, really, really loves you Mia, he tells me about you all the time. And we just… we wanted to wait because both of us are really nervous.”
Mia raised her hand and wiped her nose. “Why are you nervous?”
“Well, I want you to like me because if you don’t, neither of us want to. And your dad, well…” Samira trailed off. She leaned her back against the couch and picked at a thread on his knee, still avoiding eye contact with the child standing and staring at her while sniffling. “My dad, like your mom, um- he passed away when I was 14. I was a lot older than you and the first time my mom dated a boy, I was really scared, and angry at her. I thought he was trying to replace my dad, or that my mom never loved my dad, which isn’t true,” God, Samira thought, stop talking, this was supposed to be a father daughter conversation, not a father’s-girlfriend conversation, “But I was so sad about losing my dad that I thought if any of us moved on, we would forget we ever loved him.”
Samira thought about her mom on a cruise ship with her younger boyfriend. She thought about what she said over the phone last Fourth of July.
Samira realized she really needed to call and apologize to her mom.
“Was her boyfriend nice?” Mia asked softly, lip trembling. Samira thought over the first boyfriend mom had. It was a few weeks before Samira’s 17th birthday and the man had a bad toupee. He was nice. Not a soulmate, but he was nice.
“I wouldn’t know,” Samira decided, looking at Mia and mustering up a small smile, “I made my mom break up with him. Maybe I was mad, or jealous, or protective. I don’t really know why.”
Mia sat back down, wiping away her snot one more time and picking a crayon back up. “What was your dad like?”
“Funny,” Samira said without hesitation, the smile lingering. “He was funny, and he was the life of the party. Everyone liked him. He had an awesome mustache- when I was your age he shaved it and I cried for days because I didn’t recognize him. He always told me to relax and he only watched movies if they were, like, 6 hours long or more.”
“Six hours?” Mia giggled.
“At least.”
“Everyone liked my mom, too. I’m named after her.”
“Yeah?”
“Marisol Claudia Flores Abbot. Claudia’s my aunt, she’s in Ohio. She makes good cheesy potatoes,” Mia informed her, drawing rapidly.
“I love potatoes. I had a cat named potato.”
“Do you like the Muppets?” Samira tilted her head and thought it over.
“I used to. I don’t really keep up with them.”
Mia glanced up at Samira, furrowed her brow, then went back to focusing on her drawing. She did not ask about their relationship status again, leaving Samira plenty of time to begin thinking about how to break the news to Jack that she now knew everything.
Fifteen minutes until Mia’s bedtime, Samira finally ushered her off the living room floor and down the hall to brush her teeth; at least, she tried to, but Mia insisted that she sit down beside her. She shoved a paper covered with crayon artwork into Samira’s hands and wasted no time launching into the explanation she’d been working on.
“This is the rainbow connection.”
“The what?”
“The song from the movie!” Mia gestured toward the TV, where the credits of the Muppet film Samira hadn’t really had the energy to focus on were rolling. The young girl swiped the remote from the coffee table and skipped all the way back, until Kermit the frog began to croon a song she hadn’t heard in many, many years.
“These are the rainbows,” Mia explained over the music. There were two rainbows between three small clouds; the cloud in the middle had two stick figures that Mia clarified were Samira and Jack, because, according to Mia, he crossed the first rainbow already to get to Samira.
“Kermit says that someday the lovers and dreamers are gonna find out what’s on the other side of a rainbow because it’s really magical and beautiful over there. Dad probably crossed his first one after Mom died, which is how he got you. And on the other side of that one,” She pointed to the second rainbow, the one Samira and Jack looked poised to cross hand-in-stick-person-hand. “My mom’s waiting with your dad. I bet they’re gonna be really happy to see us. My mom is gonna give your dad Peruvian food while they’re waiting and he’ll be way fatter than you remember.”
Samira’s mouth was agape, her finger tracing her father’s mustache. Even in crayon, it was unmistakably his. She did not speak for two minutes and thirteen seconds until finally, she asked, “That’s what’s waiting for us, you think?”
“I dunno, I hope so. Kermit says the lovers and the dreamers will find out. I love my mom. You love your dad. You and my dad love each other. So I dream of us all meeting. That’s probably the best thing that could be at the end of a rainbow.”
“That’s… yeah, Mia. I actually think you’re right.”
Showing emotion in front of others was a weak point for Samira and tonight, she’d had her share. She met Mia’s eyes and nodded, sniffling just as the little girl had been earlier. Then, she stood up and gently set the drawing down before she could ruin it with her tears. Right before she did, though, she paused and looked over the page again.
“Mia,” She frowned, looking down at the girl and catching her mid-yawn.
“Hmm?”
“Where are you?”
Mia grinned. “Flip it over.”
Samira obeyed. On the opposite side of the incredibly profound, touching drawing she had surprised Samira with, there was a little girl riding a fantastical dragon that spewed hot pink flames from its fanged mouth.
“Some of us are too awesome for clouds.”