Free And Then Forever by Shirley Jump

trying to get her mother’s attention. The same attention her mother gave to the bottles that dominated her days. She supposed her mother had loved her, in her own way, and for a while there before she died, they’d actually had a decent relationship, with her mother coming across on the ferry once a week to see her grandchild. It had helped heal some of the wounds from Darcy’s childhood, but also made her even more determined to be a good mom. Right now, with Emma wanting something Darcy couldn’t give her, she wasn’t feeling like a good mom. “Maybe tomorrow.”
    Emma pouted. “I wanna build a sandcastle.”
    “I know you do. And I promise we’ll go real soon.” But not while Kincaid was here. It was going to be tough, because Emma was half fish and loved being near the water. Maybe Darcy would get lucky and it would rain all week. “Why don’t we set up your Barbie house?”
    “Okay!” Emma scrambled off the kitchen chair and ran into her room. In a matter of seconds, she’d dragged out every Barbie doll and accompanying piece of tiny furniture, spreading it in an ever widening circle on the small rectangular rug. Darcy sat cross-legged beside her daughter, setting a sofa here, a lamp there, a bed over there.
    “This is the Mommy Barbie,” Emma said, leaning one of the buxom blonde dolls against the faux refrigerator. Emma reached into the pile and pulled out a little girl doll. “And this is the Baby Barbie. Her name is…Emma!” Emma grinned.
    “That’s a perfect name.”
    “And this is…” Emma reached into the pile again, unearthing a Ken doll, “the Daddy Barbie. He loves the Mommy Barbie.” Emma knocked the two dolls heads together and made a smacking noise. “And he loves the Baby Barbie.” She did the same with Ken and the little girl doll. Then she settled all three of them at the plastic kitchen table, bending their legs to fit into hard pink chairs.
    This was one of Emma’s favorite games, setting up a little nuclear family, with a baby named after herself. She’d play through various scenarios, bringing the family to the park, or setting them up for a swimming day in the bathtub, or burying them in the sand and fashioning a castle beside them. It was sweet to watch, as Emma created the perfect little world over and over again.
    Darcy pushed aside a pile of doll clothes, and found three plates of fake dinners. She laid them on the table before the little family. “Steak on the menu tonight, kiddo.”
    Emma sat back on her heels and looked up at Darcy. “Mommy, how come I don’t have a daddy?”
    The question hit Darcy like a punch. Emma had never really asked about her father before, never talked about anything other than the fictional father she created in these little vignettes. Maybe Emma had never noticed she lacked anything until she started going to school and saw the other kids with two sets of parents. Darcy should have been prepared for the question, but she wasn’t. “He’s…far away.”
    Like two blocks.
    “How come he doesn’t live here? With me? And you?”
    Darcy had known these questions would come someday. And she’d thought she’d known what she would say. Something calm and rational. But as she looked into her daughter’s wide hazel eyes, swimming in curiosity and maybe a little hurt, none of those rational responses came to mind. “Hey, kiddo, I think I saw some cookies in the cabinet. How about we eat as many as we can and then drink a glass of milk really fast?”
     Okay, so maybe that had been avoidance at its best, Darcy thought as Emma ran off to the kitchen. But it had bought Darcy some time. Time to construct a better answer. And hopefully time to get Kincaid off the island. Once the cookies were in Emma’s hand, she forgot her question. Darcy breathed a sigh of relief. The bullet was dodged, for now. But as Emma got older, there would eventually come a day when Darcy had to tell her where her father was and why he wasn’t part of her