So that was what they did.
After the candles were blown out, Emma disappeared into her room and returned carrying the welcome sign. The edges were bent now. One corner had a grease spot from where it had rested too close to a plate during one of Natalie’s late-night conversations with Daniel.
“I don’t want this in my room anymore,” Emma said.
Natalie’s stomach tightened. “Okay.”
“Can we put it somewhere?”
“Where do you want it?”
Emma looked at both parents. “Where nobody has to pick a side.”
Daniel lowered his fork.
The next Saturday they took the sign to a framing shop. Natalie expected Emma to choose the colorful WELCOME HOME MOM side for display. Instead Emma asked whether the frame could have glass on both sides.
The employee said yes.
They hung it from a small hook near the hallway where it could be turned. Some days the bright side faced the living room. Other days the hidden sentence did. Nobody changed it to correct anyone else’s mood.
Months later, Natalie came home late from work after calling ahead twice. Emma was doing homework at the kitchen table. She barely looked up.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I am. I’m sorry.”
“Did you eat?”
“Not yet.”
“There’s pasta. Daddy made too much.”
The ordinariness of the exchange almost undid Natalie more than the reunion had.
She warmed a bowl and sat across from her daughter. Emma was drawing a family for a school assignment. Natalie saw Daniel first, then Emma, then the dog. Her chest tightened before she noticed the fourth figure standing near the porch swing in a green uniform top and jeans.
Emma caught her looking.
“Your hair is wrong,” she said.
Natalie laughed, a startled sound. “My hair is definitely wrong.”
Emma erased one line and redrew it. “Hold still.”
Natalie did.
When the picture was finished, Emma taped it to the refrigerator among the others. She did not announce what was different. She did not need to.
The first time another deployment rumor moved through Natalie’s unit, she almost kept it to herself. Nothing was official. There was no date, no destination, only the kind of uncertain conversation that could disappear by morning or grow into orders by Friday. She knew what uncertainty had done to Emma before, and every protective instinct told her to wait until she had something definite.
At dinner, Emma noticed anyway.
“You’re doing the face,” she said.
Natalie looked up. “What face?”
“The one where you’re here but thinking somewhere else.”
