Chapter 13 - Hazel Presses the Button
By summer, the gold-star calendar on the refrigerator had become unnecessary.
Damon left it there anyway.
The paper curled at the corners. Half the stickers had fallen off. One blue dolphin had somehow migrated onto the freezer handle.
Hazel no longer asked every morning whether he would come home.
She asked what they were having for dinner.
That felt like victory of the least dramatic kind.
Cora stayed, but her role changed.
Marisol joined the household three afternoons a week. Hazel protested for four days, then discovered Marisol knew how to braid doll hair and accepted her existence.
Cora took Tuesdays and Thursdays off.
Damon learned exactly how long bath time could take when a child changed her mind about which pajamas were acceptable.
He also learned that reading the same book six nights in a row was apparently required by law.
His work did not disappear.
He still left early sometimes.
He still missed things.
Once he forgot a preschool picnic and arrived twenty minutes late with the wrong juice.
Hazel cried.
Damon apologized without explaining traffic.
Then they ate sandwiches on a blanket after everyone else had started packing up.
It was not a perfect repair.
It was a real one.
Hazel turned four in June.
Damon kept the party small.
Ten children from preschool, Lucia, Cora, Marisol, Mrs. Bell, and a magician who accidentally made one of his silk scarves land in the punch bowl. Hazel declared it the best trick.
There were no society photographs and no adults Damon barely knew.
Halfway through the party, he realized he had once planned birthdays the same way he planned business dinners: impressive enough that no one could criticize the host.
This one had paper crowns, grocery-store ice cream, and a crooked banner Cora had taped too low.
Hazel wore a purple dress and spent twenty minutes digging in the garden with two other children after being told not to.
Damon let the grass stain happen.
That evening, after everyone left, Hazel climbed onto a kitchen chair and helped him wash frosting from plastic plates.
“Four big?” she asked.
“Very big.”
“Five bigger?”
“Unfortunately.”
Cora laughed from the pantry.
Hazel looked toward the sound, then back at Damon.
No panic. No checking whether one adult’s presence threatened another.
Just a child who assumed both people would still be there when she turned around.
In July, Hazel asked to go back to the tennis court.
Damon was cutting strawberries at the kitchen counter.
He nearly dropped the knife.
“Why?”
“Play.”
“With a racket?”
She nodded.
Cora looked at him from across the island.
Do not turn this into your fear.
She did not say it.
He heard it anyway.
“Okay,” Damon said.
They went Sunday morning.
The club was nearly empty. Sunlight fell across the court in long bright rectangles. The ball machine stood in the same corner as before, but Hazel did not stop at the door this time.
She ran to the basket of child-sized rackets.
“Pink.”
“Obviously,” Cora said.
Damon carried a blue one he had no intention of using.
For twenty minutes, they hit balls badly.
Hazel missed most of them.
Every successful contact produced a shout of triumph completely disproportionate to the achievement.
Damon applauded every one.
Then Hazel noticed the machine.
She pointed.
“Can do slow?”
Damon’s stomach tightened.
The coach looked at him.
He looked at Hazel.
“Do you want me to press the button?”
She shook her head.
“Me.”
The coach brought the machine to the far baseline and turned the speed to its lowest setting. One soft ball every six seconds, aimed well away from Hazel’s body.
He handed her the remote.
Damon crouched beside her.
“You can stop whenever you want.”
Hazel nodded.
Cora stood just outside the service box.
“No one is going anywhere,” she said.
Hazel looked at both of them.
Then she walked to the line.
Not the exact place from before.
A few feet to the left.
Her place.
She held the remote in one hand and the racket in the other.
Damon’s chest felt tight.
Hazel pressed green.
The machine hummed.
A ball rolled through the feeder and floated across the court.
Hazel swung too early.
Missed.
She laughed.
Another ball came.
She hit the frame of the racket. The ball bounced sideways.
“Again!”
The third ball arrived.
Hazel connected cleanly enough to send it three feet over the net.
She screamed with delight.
Cora clapped.
Damon laughed before he realized he was doing it.
Another ball came.
Then another.
Hazel missed both.
She did not care.
After six balls, she pressed red.
The machine stopped.
Just like that.
No adult touched the remote.
No one told her when she had learned enough.
No one laughed because she was afraid.
Hazel looked down at the little device in her hand, then back at Damon.
“Stopped.”
“Yes.”
“I do it.”
“Yes.”
She walked over and placed the remote in his palm.
The gesture brought him back to the day he had set another remote in front of Evelyn.
Back then, he had thought the object represented control.
Now it represented something simpler.
Choice.
Hazel ran toward Cora for water.
Damon looked at the remote once, then set it on the bench.
His phone vibrated in his pocket.
He ignored it.
Cora noticed.
“Important?”
“Probably.”
She handed Hazel a bottle.
Hazel drank, water running down her chin.
“Daddy play.”
Damon picked up the blue racket.
“I’m terrible.”
“Me too.”
Cora laughed.
Damon stepped onto the court.
Hazel stood beside him rather than behind him.
The coach tossed a ball by hand.
Damon missed.
Hazel laughed so hard she bent at the waist.
He pointed the racket at her.
“Your turn.”
She straightened and took her place.
Outside the court, his phone vibrated again.
Damon did not look at it.
Hazel raised the pink racket.
May you like
This time, when the ball came toward her, she did not lift her arms to protect her face.
She swung.
