Chapter 29

There was no one home when I got there – Cecelia's car was gone from the driveway, and I knew as soon as I walked into the house that it was empty. I knew that if Cecelia was gone, Darlia was too – there's no way either of us would leave a 10-year-old alone in the house by herself. I looked at my watch and realized that Cecelia was gone to pick Darlia up from school. I hung my hat and jacket on the coat rack and headed down the hall to my study. Once there, I sat down at my computer and began playing solitaire.

I have no idea how long I moved electronic cards around, winning occasionally and losing more often. There's something mindless about solitaire. Once you've mastered the rules, you can turn your brain off when you're playing – your eyes and hands work automatically, seeing the possibilities and making the moves without any input from your mind. I used to play endlessly with a deck of Bicycle cards, and now I do it on the computer.

At some point I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was too small and light to be Cecelia's, and I turned in my chair and saw Darlia. "Are you okay, Daddy?"

"Not really, Weightlifter."

"Are you..." She paused, and I realized she was going to use a multi-syllable word and wanted to pronounce it correctly. "Are you depressed?" Well, it wasn't a real big word, but not one she used every day either.

"Did Mommy tell you to ask me?"

She nodded.

"But I bet you care too."

"I love you, Daddy." And she did, too, there wasn't any doubt about that.

"I love you too, 'Lia. And yeah, I'm pretty down today." I came to a decision. "Why don't you sit down?"

She nodded and went around the desk to one of the leather captain's chairs that Cecelia put there. When she'd made me a study out of the garage, she'd done it right. I swiveled around in my chair, after closing down the solitaire program.

Darlia looked at me, her feet not touching the floor, but with her hands folded in her lap and her expression and posture as dignified as Queen Victoria's. "Is it 'cause you're working for that a-bor-tion place?" She was careful with that word too.

"That's part of it. I'm protecting people who kill babies, and that's got me all messed up."

"Why do people want to kill babies?"

"That's the 64 quadrillion dollar question, 'Lia. Mostly it comes down to thinking they're more important than anyone else. They think that what they want is more important than what anyone else wants. They think that their lives are more important than anyone else's life. They're greedy and self-centered, and they don't care who they hurt just so long as they can have their fun without any consequences."

Darlia thought that over. Without intending to, I'd spoken as though I were talking to an adult, and though I don't use as many big words, or words as big, as Cecelia does, Darlia's still just a child. "Daddy, could you explain 'con-se-quenc-es' please?"

"Good job on the pronunciation," I told her. "Well, say you climb up on one of Mommy's planters on the patio, and jump off face first. What would happen?"

"I'd bust my face!" She giggled a little, not knowing enough about depression for mine to affect her. At that I don't think she'll ever be prone to it – she gets mad and she gets sad just like anyone else, but her disposition is basically cheerful and she's never shown any sign that she's inherited my tendency to get depressed.

"Exactly," I said. "And the busted face would be the consequence."

"So they're what happens when you do something?"

"Yeah."

"And people who get abortions are ... they..."

"Lemme help you out, Darlia." Kids her age don't need to know all about sex, and she doesn't. "When a woman gets pregnant, it affects her for months – if she keeps the child, for the rest of her life. It takes just a few minutes to get pregnant, but it's a life-long consequence. And women – some women, anyway – want to have fun without having to think about taking care of a baby, without having to carry that baby around for nine months."

"That's not a good reason to kill a baby!"

"I know that," I said, "and you know that. And a lot of the women know that. But they do it anyway. And it's horrible."

"You know what it makes me think of?" Darlia asked.

I shook my head.

"We're studying the Hol-o-caust in history," she said. "And there's a Jewish boy in my class. He calls it ha Shoah. He told us about some of his family who died then. He was crying – he said he never will meet so many people in his family 'cause they're dead. That's what abortion makes me think of."

"What did you do when he started crying?" It was a tangent, but for some reason it had grabbed my attention.

"I got up to hug him, but Melinda got there first. And the teacher hugged him too. And after he was done talking about it, we prayed for him." Though Darlia's school, Calvin Academy, admits anyone regardless of religious beliefs, it's a Christian school and never pretends to be anything else.

"Good," I said. "That's what y'all should have done." I sighed. "Abortion reminds me of the Holocaust too." I remembered telling Dr. Bernard how her work compared with the Nazis' final solution. "It kills millions of people, 'Lia. You know about millions."

"There's ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands, and millions. A million is a lot."

"I've known college grads who couldn't have put it so well, 'Lia. Yeah, a million is a lot. And every year abortion kills a million and a half babies. Every year..."

"And that makes you very sad."

"It makes me sad, and it makes me mad, and I can't wave a magic wand and stop it, and that makes me sadder and madder."