Ethan froze beside me.<\/p>\n
For several seconds, he didn’t say a word.<\/p>\n
Neither did I.<\/p>\n
On Diane’s lower abdomen, just above the edge of her swimsuit, was a small birthmark.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t unusual because of its shape.<\/p>\n
It was unusual because of what had been drawn around it.<\/p>\n
A tiny smiley face.<\/p>\n
Two dots for eyes.<\/p>\n
A curved line for a mouth.<\/p>\n
Exactly like the silly face Ethan used to draw on the birthmark on his own stomach whenever he played with Ariel before bedtime.<\/p>\n
She loved it.<\/p>\n
Every night she would poke it and laugh.<\/p>\n
“Daddy’s little face!” she’d call it.<\/p>\n
I’d seen him draw it hundreds of times with a washable marker.<\/p>\n
That morning, before the guests arrived, he’d even done it again to make Ariel giggle.<\/p>\n
Now the same little face was on Diane.<\/p>\n
Ariel hadn’t been pointing at Diane’s body.<\/p>\n
She had recognized Daddy’s drawing.<\/p>\n
I slowly looked at Ethan.<\/p>\n
“How did that get there?”<\/p>\n
He swallowed hard.<\/p>\n
“I… I don’t know.”<\/p>\n
Diane immediately sat up.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a joke.”<\/p>\n
“A joke?” I asked.<\/p>\n
She reached for a towel.<\/p>\n
“Ethan noticed my birthmark earlier when I asked where the sunscreen was. Ariel was watching us, so he drew a little face on it to make her laugh. That’s all.”<\/p>\n
I stared at both of them.<\/p>\n
“When?”<\/p>\n
“This afternoon,” Ethan answered quickly. “You were inside getting the cake.”<\/p>\n
I tried to remember.<\/p>\n
I had been in the kitchen for almost twenty minutes.<\/p>\n
It was possible.<\/p>\n
But it still felt strange.<\/p>\n
“Why didn’t anyone mention it?”<\/p>\n
Diane shrugged.<\/p>\n
“Because it wasn’t important.”<\/p>\n
My father, who had been talking with relatives across the yard, walked over after noticing the tension.<\/p>\n
“What’s going on?”<\/p>\n
Diane laughed awkwardly.<\/p>\n
“Nothing. Ariel thought Ethan’s little doodle meant he was inside my stomach.”<\/p>\n
My father’s eyes landed on the tiny drawing.<\/p>\n
He chuckled.<\/p>\n
“That sounds exactly like something a three-year-old would believe.”<\/p>\n
The tension eased slightly.<\/p>\n
Still, something bothered me.<\/p>\n
Later that evening, after the guests had left and Ariel was asleep, I sat with Ethan on the back porch.<\/p>\n
“I need you to be honest with me.”<\/p>\n
“I am.”<\/p>\n
“Did anything inappropriate happen today?”<\/p>\n
He shook his head immediately.<\/p>\n
“No.”<\/p>\n
“Then why did you look terrified?”<\/p>\n
He sighed.<\/p>\n
“Because I knew exactly what Ariel meant before anyone else did.”<\/p>\n
He rubbed his forehead.<\/p>\n
“For one horrible second, I thought you were going to believe there was something between Diane and me.”<\/p>\n
I looked at him.<\/p>\n
“And there isn’t?”<\/p>\n
He reached for my hand.<\/p>\n
“There never has been.”<\/p>\n
The next morning, I called my father and asked him directly whether anything had seemed unusual.<\/p>\n
He laughed.<\/p>\n
“Diane asked Ethan to help her put sunscreen on the spot she couldn’t reach. Ariel wandered over, and Ethan made that little drawing to distract her while the sunscreen dried. I watched the whole thing from the patio.”<\/p>\n
The knot in my stomach finally loosened.<\/p>\n
Sometimes children notice details adults completely overlook.<\/p>\n
They describe them in ways that sound shocking because they don’t yet have the words to explain what they actually mean.<\/p>\n
Ariel hadn’t uncovered a terrible secret.<\/p>\n
She had simply connected the little smiling face she always called “Daddy” with the exact same drawing she saw on Diane’s stomach.<\/p>\n
A week later, Ethan drew the same smiley face on his own birthmark again.<\/p>\n
Ariel laughed just as hard as she always had.<\/p>\n
This time, though, she pointed at him and proudly announced,<\/p>\n
“See? Daddy’s back where he belongs.”<\/p>\n
The entire family burst into laughter\u2014and this time, so did I.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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