Morning Glory(63)

I fold my arms. “Did I say that?”

Ella smiles, and James sets her back down. “Wait, I have to go find Aggie.”

When Ella was three, she saw an old carved wooden sailboat in an antiques store in Monterey, on a press trip I’d been invited to. We had no idea why, but she fell in love with the little boat. Its varnish had long since worn off, but red lettering on the side remained: “Agnes Anne,” now “Aggie.”

She wouldn’t let it go, so James bought it for her. She slept with it that night, and every night after that. “Aren’t little girls supposed to love dolls, or teddy bears?” James asked. We had to stifle our laughter while watching her cuddle the boat on that first night. “It could have been worse,” James said. “She could have fallen in love with your curling iron.”

Ella isn’t like other little girls. She’s inquisitive and curious, with a heart that senses others’ emotions with the precision of Doppler radar. She drops coins from her piggy bank into the outstretched hands of the homeless in Times Square, frets over the plight of hurt animals on the roadside, and two Christmases ago, organized a coat drive at her school when she saw a little boy shivering on the playground.

“You know,” James says, “what in the world are we going to do if she ever loses Aggie?”

I sigh. “We’ll have to find another one.”

“There is no other Aggie,” he says. “Have you seen the way it’s carved? It’s an original. It was all hand-done. There’s no way it could be re-created.”

“Well,” I say with a smile, “then we can’t lose her.”

James nods as Ella returns with the little sailboat under her arm. “I’m ready,” she says, looking up at her dad.

“Let’s give your mommy a few more minutes,” he says. “Then we’ll all go together.”

I finish the article as planned, just as my cell phone rings from the bedside table. I groan. It’s my editor. “Hi, Suzanne,” I say, motioning for James to shut the door.

“Oh, good, I caught you,” she says. “The photographer we hired for the shoot bailed. Did you bring a camera?”

I glance at James’s camera on the desk across the room. “Well, yeah, but—”

“Then you can add another piece to the story,” she says. “We just need some candids of families near the falls. Kids and parents hiking together, out in nature, that sort of thing.”

“Suzanne, I’m a writer, not a photographer.” I recognize the annoyance in my own voice, but I don’t apologize or try to mask it. Suzanne already assigned this trip at the last minute—the week of Ella’s birthday, no less. I had to cancel a party at Princess Beatrice’s Tearoom. And there were tears. Lots of tears. And now Suzanne is asking me to bring back photographs, too?

“Oh, don’t be such a diva,” she says. “They don’t need to be perfect. Candid is fine. Remember, that’s what Juan likes. The type of stuff people post on MySpace. You just take some snapshots. He’ll make it work.”

I sigh.

“Hey, aren’t you there with your husband and daughter?”

“Yes,” I say reluctantly. I can almost hear the wheels in her mind turning.

“You could photograph them together,” she says. “In front of the falls.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Great,” she says. “I know you won’t let me down.”

I hang up the phone and throw on a jacket, then tuck James’s camera into my bag and walk out to the front room, where James and Ella are playing a game of Uno.

“Ready?” James asks, looking up.

“Yeah,” I say. “But we have a slight detour before ice cream.”

Ella groans.

“Suzanne needs me to get some family shots of the falls.”

James smiles. “Good. We can walk up that trail we found yesterday.”

Ella folds her arms across her chest. “Do we have to, Mama?”

“Sorry, love,” I say. “I promise, it will be quick. And you and Daddy get to be my models.”

She grins and runs to the door.



The waterfall is farther away than we thought. By the time we get to the ninth switchback, James and I are winded.

“C’mon, you guys!” Ella calls out from ahead. “I can hear the waterfall!”

We catch our breath, then trudge on. “It’s beautiful out here,” James says to me. He stops and reaches for my hand. “You know, we wouldn’t be getting to see all of this if it weren’t for you.” He kisses the top of my hand. “Am I married to the greatest woman on earth, or what?”