Thief

My mother smiles ruefully. “One who never stops speaking. She gets unfathomable amounts of practice.”

Estella repeats the word “unfathomable” all the way to baggage claim. She gets the giggles when I start chanting it with her, and by the time I pull their luggage from the belt, my mother’s head looks ready to explode.

“You used to do that when you were little,” she says. “Say the same thing over and over until I wanted to scream.”

I kiss my daughter’s forehead. “Who needs a paternity test?” I joke. Which is the absolute wrong thing to say, because my small person starts chanting paternity test all the way through the airport … until we climb into the cab outside and I distract her with a pink bus that’s driving by.

During the cab ride home, Estella wants to know what her bedroom looks like, what color blankets I got for her bed, if I have any toys, if she can have sushi for di

“Sushi?” I repeat. “What about spaghetti or chicken fingers?”

She pulls a face that only Leah could have taught her, and says, “I don’t eat kid food.”

My mother raises her eyebrows. “You’d never need a maternity test,” she says out of the corner of her mouth. I have to stifle my laughter.

After taking them to my flat to drop off their things, we head out to a sushi restaurant where my three-year-old consumes a spicy tuna roll on her own, and then eats two pieces of my lunch. I watch in amazement as she mixes soy and wasabi together and picks up her chopsticks. The waiter brought her a fixed pair, one with the rolled up paper and the rubber band to keep the sticks together, but she politely refused them and then dazzled us with her chubby fingered dexterity. She drinks hot tea out of a porcelain cup, and everyone in the restaurant stops to comment on her hair and ladylike behavior. Leah’s done a good job teaching her ma

“I want to ride the twain, Daddy.” Her face is pressed into my neck and her voice is sleepy.

“Tomorrow,” I tell her. “We’ll send Doll off to visit friends, and we’ll do lots of gross things.”

“All wight,” she sighs, “but Mommy doesn’t like me to do…” and then her voice drops off and she’s asleep. My heart beats and aches and beats and aches.

I spend the next week alone with my daughter. My mother visits friends and relatives, giving us plenty of time to bond and do our own thing. I take her to the zoo and the park and the museum, and upon her request, we eat sushi every day for lunch. I talk her into spaghetti one night for di

We stop by my father’s house one evening. He lives in Cambridge in an impressive farmhouse with stables out back. He carries Estella from stall to stall where he introduces her to the horses. She repeats their names: Sugarcup, Nerphelia, Adonis, Stokey. I watch him charm my daughter and feel grateful that she’s a continent away from him. This is what he does. He gets right down on your level — whoever you are — and shines his attention on you. If you like to travel, he’ll ask where you’ve been, he’ll listen with his eyes narrowed and laugh at all your jokes. If you’re interested in model cars, he will ask your opinion on building them and make plans to have you teach him. He makes you feel like you’re the only person worth having a conversation with, and then he goes a year without having a conversation with you. The disappointment is vast. He will never build that model car with you, he will cancel di

We go from the stables to the kitchen where he makes a show of making us huge ice cream sundaes, and then squirts whipped cream into Estella’s mouth right from the can. She a

Estella cries when we part at the airport. She’s clutching the llama to her chest, her tears dripping into its fur, begging me to let her stay in “Wondon.” I grind my teeth together and hate every decision I’ve ever made. God. What am I even letting her go back to? Leah is a vicious, co

“Mum,” I say. I look into my mother’s eyes, and she gets it. She grabs my hand and squeezes.

“I pick her up from school twice a week, and I have her on weekends. I’ll make sure she’s okay until you have her back with you.”

I nod, unable to say anything else. Estella sobs into my neck, and the pain I feel is too complex to put into words.

“I’m going to pack up and come home,” I say to my mother over my daughter’s shoulder. “I can’t do this. It’s too hard.”

She laughs. “Being a daddy suits you. You have to finish out your contract with them. Until then, I’ll keep bringing her to see you.”

My mother has to pick her up and carry her through security. I want to jump past the barriers and snatch her back.

I’m so fucking depressed on the tube ride home; I sit with my head in my hands for most of it. I drink myself into a stupor that night and write an email to Olivia that I never send. Then I pass out and dream that Leah takes Estella to Asia and says she’s never coming back.

Since the court appointed all my custody dates with Estella, I get to have her with me every other Christmas — which makes it this Christmas. It’ll be my first Christmas with my daughter. Leah called me seething when our court-appointed mediator gave her the news.

“Christmas is important to me,” she said. “This is wrong. A child should never be away from her mother on Christmas.”

“A child should never be away from her father on Christmas either,” I shot back. “But you made sure that happened for two years.”

“This is your fault for moving away. I shouldn’t have to pay for your asinine decisions.”

She was right to a degree. I didn’t have anything for her, so I told her I had to go and hung up.