Then she turned her head toward the window, where a strip of gray sky sat between the buildings.
“I wish I could see the ocean myself someday. Just once.”
Someone cleared their throat behind me.
She was thinking hard.
Dad stood in the doorway.
He didn’t say anything then, but his eyes met mine.
I saw him make some silent promise I couldn’t yet read.
“We’ll figure something out, baby,” I whispered into her hair. “I promise.”
I didn’t know how.
I didn’t know when.
“I promise.”
All I knew was that my little girl had asked for one small piece of the world.
And I would find a way to give it to her.
***
That night, after Sophie fell asleep, I started looking at travel costs.
“Stop worrying about the money.”
Dad sat beside me. “I’ll help you pay for it. Even if it’s only for a few days, take her to see the ocean.”
Tears filled my eyes.
I started looking at travel costs.
“Dad, I can’t—”
“You can. She deserves that memory,” he said quietly. “Promise me you’ll go.”
“I promise.”
He smiled and patted my shoulder.
If only I’d known then why Dad offered to pay for the trip so readily.
***
The phone call came a few days later.
“She deserves that memory,”
I was sitting at Sophie’s bedside.
When I answered the call, Dad’s neighbor’s voice broke through the receiver.
“Honey, you need to sit down. Your father collapsed in the garden.”
Numbness spread through my body.
“Is he… please tell me he’s okay.”
“The paramedics tried. They tried everything. I’m so sorry.”
“Is he… please tell me he’s okay.”
I don’t remember hanging up.
Sophie leaned over to tap my shoulder.
“Mommy, why are you crying?”
I looked at her, and I saw my father reading Moana to her.
I saw them watching YouTube videos about the ocean together.
And now I had to tell her that he was gone.
I looked at her, and I saw my father
Sophie didn’t cry at first.
She sat there, holding her bunny tight.
Then she took my hand.
“It’s okay, Mommy. Grandpa went to heaven. I’m also going to heaven, and I’ll tell him how much we love him when I see him again.”
I forced myself to smile for her.
Then I went out into the hallway and broke.
“It’s okay, Mommy.”
***
That night, I went home and sat at the kitchen table in the dark.
I stared at the envelope Dad had pressed into my hands a few days earlier.
Inside was cash he had been saving for months, maybe years.
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