Chapter 24 - ZION ASKS THE QUESTIONZion read about the investigation at school.
That was how badly I had underestimated seven-year-olds with tablets.
He came home angry.
“Mommy Claire died because a doctor was drunk?”
Emily and I froze.
“No,” I said.
“But it says—”
“Sit with us.”
“I don’t want to sit.”
Fair.
He looked like me when angry.
That frightened me.
“Was the doctor drunk?”
“Not when he operated on your mother.”
“But he had been before?”
“Yes.”
“Then why did they let him?”
I had no child-friendly version of institutional risk management.
Emily tried.
“Some adults made bad decisions because they were afraid of what would happen if people found out the truth.”
Zion frowned.
“So they lied.”
“Yes.”
“Did Mommy Claire know?”
“Some of it.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
His eyes filled.
“Why didn’t you protect her?”
There it was.
The question I had asked myself for thirteen years.
I could have lied.
Could have explained complexity.
Instead:
“I tried.”
“But she died.”
“Yes.”
“Then it didn’t work.”
My throat tightened.
“No.”
He looked furious.
Then began crying.
Not dramatically.
Quietly.
I moved toward him.
He let me hold him.
“I thought dads save people.”
“I used to think that too.”
“You save me.”
“Sometimes.”
“What if you can’t?”
I looked at Emily.
She was crying now too.
“Then I stay with you.”
Zion pressed his face into my chest.
The answer sounded small.
But it was the truest thing I had learned.
Later that night, I played one of Claire’s recordings for him.
Not the medical tape.
One she had made before surgery.
She told him she loved him.
She told him I would probably buy him an absurd first car.
She told him to ignore me and get something used.
Zion laughed.
Then the recording said:
Your daddy thinks love means keeping bad things from happening.
Teach him that sometimes love means sitting beside someone when they do.
Zion looked at me.
“Mommy knew you were weird.”
I laughed so hard I cried.
“Yes.”
That night, after he slept, Emily sat beside me.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
We stayed there.
May you like
No fixing.
Claire would have approved.
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