“I called Ivan five times.” I held up my phone. “He has not answered once. I called you. You hung up. If I sent her here, why would I be looking for her like this?”
Irma looked at the phone for one second.
Armando looked longer.
“Let me see her,” I said. “Now.”
Irma’s jaw tightened.
“If you refuse,” I continued, keeping my voice steady, “I will ask for legal assistance and document that my child was moved without my authorization.”
Armando shifted.
“She arrived crying,” he said.
Irma turned sharply toward him. “Armando.”
He did not look away from me. “She arrived crying.”
Something in my chest folded.
Armando stepped aside.
“Come in.”
Renata sat at the kitchen table with a mug of hot chocolate in front of her. She was wearing the jeans I had laid out the night before and the pink sneakers she usually left by the back door. Her hair had been brushed badly, one side tucked behind her ear, the other curling around her cheek. Her shoulders were pulled up around her neck, and both hands held the mug though she was not drinking.
“Renny,” I said.
She looked up.
She did not run to me.
That broke something deeper than any argument in the hallway.
My daughter looked at me as if she had to decide whether I was real.
I moved slowly and knelt beside her chair.
“Hi, my love.”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Grandma said you didn’t want me anymore.”
For one second, I could not breathe.
Irma and Armando stood in the doorway behind us. I did not look at them. If I had, I might have said something that belonged to my anger and not to my child.
I placed one hand gently on Renata’s knee.
“That is not true,” I said, and my voice cracked on the last word. “I came home, and you were not there. I called Ivan. I called Irma. I came here as soon as I knew where you were.”
“She said you were tired of me.”
I swallowed so hard it hurt.
“I get tired from work. I get tired from not sleeping. I get tired from grown-up problems. But I have never, ever been tired of you.”
Her eyes searched mine with a seriousness no seven-year-old should have needed.
“You didn’t tell them to bring me?”
“Never.”
Her arms came up slowly.
Not the way she usually hugged me, flinging herself forward with trust that I would catch her. This hug was careful. Testing. Her small hands touched my shoulders first, then tightened little by little until she was clinging to me.
I held her so tightly I could feel my heartbeat against her cheek.
Irma spoke from the doorway, quieter now. “We thought you did not want her with you.”
“I want my daughter with me,” I said without turning around.