Page 2 of Knife Thrower

“There are options,” she says. “You don’t have to decide right now.”

I press my palm flat against my stomach. Nothing there yet. No kick, no shape.

His.

My stomach turns.

But then something else moves through me, small and stubborn and entirely separate from him.

“I’m keeping her,” I say.

“It could be a boy.”

“No.” I hear the crack in my voice and hate it. “I just know it's a girl.”

Eighteen

She arrives on a Tuesday in June, in a heat wave, with the hospital air conditioner dead and a nurse fanning me with a clipboard.

I search her face the moment they set her on my chest. I search for his jaw, his mouth, the flat gray of his eyes. I brace for it like a slap.

It never comes.

She has my chin, maybe. A crease between her brows like she’s already annoyed at the world. A fist that finds my finger and clamps down with startling strength.

“What’s her name?” the nurse asks.

“June.”

“After the month?”

“After the first good thing that ever happened to me.”

The nurse’s fan goes still. She looks at me a beat too long, then turns away and busies herself with the monitor.

I tell June everything that night, in whispers, in the dark, with her little weight tucked under my chin. Not the ugly parts. The rest. That I will find us a home. That nobody will ever hurt her. That she will grow up loved.

Five

“Mama, why do you always sit where you can see the door?”

We’re in a diner off Route 9, and June has syrup on her chin and a crayon behind each ear. She uses them for antennae. She’s a Martian this week.

“Best seat in the house.”

“You say that about every seat.”

“Because it’s true about every seat.”

She narrows her eyes. Five years old and she interrogates like a cop. “That’s not an answer. That’s a dodge.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Where did you learn the word dodge?”

“Marcus at daycare. He says it when his dad asks about the window.” She tips her plate toward me. “You can have my last pancake if you tell me.”

I pick up my fork and cut the pancake in half, then give her the bigger piece. “Sometimes grown-ups like to know where the exits are. That’s all.”

“Are you scared of something?”