“It’s to hold the phone. You slide the belt through those slits at the back, and put the phone…” But she was already threading everything together, sliding the belt around the waist of her corduroys, closing and snapping open the pouch with an almost voluptuous satisfaction. “Don’t forget the phone.”
I showed her how to slide the battery in until it clicked, how to put the phone in the charger. She listened with half an ear while running her fingers back and forth on the smooth belt and kicking idly at the recliner.
“Pay attention. I want you to carry it with you everywhere.” I handed it to her.
“Even when I go swimming?”
“Not in the water, no. But everywhere else. Put it in the pouch.”
She slid it in, appeared to be delighted with the fit.
“And there’s a present that goes with it.” I gave her one of the small boxes.
She opened it and lifted out a thick metal bangle. She weighed it expertly on her palm and frowned at its heft. “Is it silver?”
“No. Look on the inside.”
“There’s some numbers.”
“They are secret numbers, just for you and me. Not even for Aba.” I would just have to hope. “That’s my cell phone number.” I pulled my phone from my pocket and flipped it open, turned it on, and showed her. “I carry it everywhere.” Or I would from now on. It beeped: three missed calls and one voice message. All from Dornan. Her wary look was back. Dornan could wait. “I want you to keep that bangle on your wrist, and the phone at your belt or in your pocket, and I want you to call me anytime you need me.”
“So you won’t get lonely,” she said.
“Yes. Yes, that’s right.” I recovered myself. “You can call me in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning, anytime, I won’t get—I’d like it.”
She was watching Button with his toy.
“Luz?”
“Is that why you want to be my tía, so you won’t be lonely?”
“Tía?”
“Aba says you’re going to be my auntie.”
“I—Ah, well—”
“Are you Button’s tía, too?” She still wasn’t looking at me. “I’ve never had an auntie before.”
And then I understood: she was afraid. For her, gaining a relative had always led to terrible change.
“I have an aunt,” I said. “Her name is Hjordis. She talks to me on the phone and sometimes buys me presents. That’s what aunts do.”
“She didn’t take you away, even when she was lonely?”
“Never.” I took her chin in my hand, turned her head so she was looking at me. “Luz, I’m going home today but you’ll stay here. A few things will be different—you’ll go to school, a nice school where you’ll make friends—but every day you’ll come home to Aba and Mr. Carpenter and Button. No one is ever going to take you away. I might talk to you on the phone sometimes, when… when I wish there was someone to kiss me better, and you can call me. If you don’t know what a word means, or if you get lost, or you think something Aba or Mr. Carpenter wants you to do is wrong, call that number. I’ll always answer and I’ll always listen. That’s what aunts do. Do you understand?”
She nodded, eyes enormous.
“Now I want you to take out the phone and learn how to use it.”
She put the bangle on the carpet and took the phone out of its pouch. It was as big as her nine-year-old hand.
“Open it up. That little button there, the round one, turns it on, you have to press that first. Then you dial the number.” She nodded. “Do it now. Dial my number.”
She read the number from the bangle, dialed it. “It’s not ringing.”
“When you dial the number, you have to press Send, the green one.” My phone shrilled. I flipped it open, put it to my ear. Luz lifted hers.
She blushed, hesitated. “Aud,” she said.
“Anytime,” I said into the phone, then closed it up. “You end the call by pressing that button, the red one.”
She pushed the button solemnly, put the phone back in its soft leather pouch, and picked up the bangle again. The fear seemed to be gone. “There’s two numbers.”
“The other one is my lawyer. If ever I don’t answer, if my phone breaks or something”—if I’m lying dead in a park with my throat cut—“you can call her and leave a message. She’s very nice. Keep the bangle safe, wear that all the time, even in the pool if you want. It’s white gold.”
Her expression didn’t change but she slid the bangle onto her left wrist and admired it for a while.
I pushed the phone box over to her. “There’s an instruction book in there. It’s a bit hard to figure out, but eventually you’ll be able to program those numbers into the phone for speed dial.”
She mouthed speed dial to herself and looked determined. I filed that response away for future use. While she experimented with the pouch, sliding it back and forth until she found the most comfortable position, I opened the other small box.
“And this one’s for you, Button.”
“Button.” Luz tapped him on the hand until he looked up from his mostly dismantled fire engine. “Another present.”
I fastened the stainless steel ID bracelet around his right wrist. He looked at it, took it off, put it back on again, then went back to his engine.
“That has his name and address and phone number on it,” I said, and Luz nodded. She had her eyes on the last box, the silver one. “And this is a special present. I hope you like it.”
It was heavy for a nine-year-old, but she didn’t ask for help so I didn’t offer it. After a bit of a struggle—she refused to tear the paper—she had it unwrapped. She folded the paper with great care: putting off disappointment as long as possible. Eventually she contemplated the hinged wooden box.
“There’s a latch at the side,” I said.
She looked at me, looked at the box. I nodded. She lifted the lid. It opened like a book. Nested on green velvet were seven volumes bound in brown leather, each stamped in gold on the spine with the name C. S. Lewis and the title.
“For when you have to take the others back to the library,” I said. She was hardly breathing. “Take one out.”
“Which one?”
“Your favorite.”
“But I haven’t read them all.”
“Then my favorite, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
She lifted it reverently. Traced the lettering on the cover, turned it over. Opened it. Rubbed the maroon silk bookmark between her fingers, touched the gold-edged pages.
“There are illustrations,” I said.
She turned a few pages, studied the first picture. Turned another page and, two minutes later, another. She was reading.
I opened my phone quietly, dialed, and listened to Dornan’s message. “Aud? What’s happening? You said you’d call. Turn your bloody phone on! Call me.” He sounded angry and anxious, but not as though anything bad had happened. I closed the phone.
Luz read on, head bent. Her scalp gleamed at the part, very white, very vulnerable. So young. So much she didn’t know.
“Luz.” She looked up. The open inquiry in her toffee-colored eyes stopped me cold.
I cleared my throat. “When you’ve read them all, I want you to call me, tell me what you think. Which one’s your favorite. Will you do that?”
She nodded. Her eyes flicked back to the page for a moment. I leaned down so she had to focus on me.
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
They all stood in front of the house to wave me goodbye. Jud stood as though in church. Button moved restlessly, head turning this way and that. Adeline had one arm tight around his shoulders but her eyes rested on Luz. Mine, her gaze said, My girl. Lucky woman: to believe she’d lost her girl and to then get her back. She had never even said thank you.