Tell Them This When I Die

Eight Planets and Seven Notes

Adam leaves the station and goes to the bar at Nyx. Stupid moves, illogical moves.

They give Adam gin after gin, but she doesn't come down. No one has told her he's there, so she's curled in the Streetheart shirt, eyes closed and head hidden under the blankets.

Adam tries knocking on the penthouse floor. Tries looking for Peter, who isn't downstairs. He's up in the penthouse, too, watching T.V and bringing Eris food occasionally. In a few hours, he'll switch off with Kayla, who won't be at Nyx for another little while.

Adam drinks the gin, drinks more gin. He wants her to come downstairs. Wants her to come downstairs in the red dress, and they can restart. He won't leave when he gets up. He'll call Sarah from the penthouse living room, tell her he's going to be late, and they'll talk when he gets there. He'll go back to her room. Get back into the bed. Run his hands over her arms and kiss her forehead. Tell her he's going to leave to go to Daphne's party. He's not going to run into Nikolas on the stairs. It's just not going to happen. The sun will wake her up again in a few hours, and she'll never put on the Streetheart shirt and make a martini. She'll go down to Nyx, be Eris. She'll never become his mother.

Adam looks at that unknown number that called him twice that morning. It's her number, but he hasn't put a contact into it. He doesn't think he will. His finger wants to touch it, wants to tell her that he's here. Come down and see me. Show me that you'll be fine. Show me I didn't ruin you.

Adam drives home, drunk. He parks in the driveway behind the SUV and takes three minutes to unlock the door. Sarah is in bed already, but she can hear him fumble with the lock. She can hear him stumble his way to the kitchen, knock a glass off the counter.

She closes her eyes. She knows those sounds. They're so familiar, so eerie. She hears the fridge close, hears the water run. Hears him knock something else off the counter. She closes her eyes as tight as she can. Pretends she can't hear it. Night after night. She's not a bad person for giving him time to work out whatever he's going through. As long as he doesn't wake Daphne up. As long as he doesn't ever come home a little too early or a little too late. Sarah will keep her eyes closed until he pries them open.

Sarah drops Daphne off at school at seven on the weekdays. The fall is coming, and Daphne is starting kindergarten. Sarah walks her into the school, but Daphne does not look back.

She comes home a few days later and tells Sarah she needs a recorder. They're going to play hot cross buns in music class. Sarah didn't know they taught music that early. She didn't ever think Daphne would learn something that Sarah already knew.

Sarah goes to the store and gets Daphne a blue recorder. She buys a sheet of planet stickers and lets Daphne put them on. Adam watches from the kitchen as he makes his breakfast, already in uniform. His eyes skip over Sarah, land on Daphne. He's hungover. He's depressed, lost.

Sarah teaches Daphne how to play. She tells her what a 'C' is, and Daphne doesn't get it.

Adam watches as Sarah shakes her head when Daphne doesn't understand what she's trying to say.

"Like the alphabet?" Daphne repeats. "But they're sounds."

Sarah swallows. She doesn't know how to explain it. She glances at the piano, silent in the sunroom. "You can call them whatever you want," she says. "It's like you. You're Daphne, but you would still be you if we'd named you something else. The sounds are the sounds. We just named them as the alphabet."

"Can I name them something different?"

"It might be harder to learn that way," Sarah says.

Daphne tries to learn the sounds as the alphabet, but she doesn't get how the letters can also be sounds. That just doesn't make sense to her.