Tima blinked. She was still half-asleep, that blurred, warm, not-quite-here state that naps produced. But at the word *Papa*, something focused. Her eyes found the phone in Steph's hand. She reached for it.

Steph held it to her ear. Not against it — toddlers and ear-to-phone alignment was an inexact science — but close enough.

"Hello, love," Erik said. Steph could hear his voice through the speaker, thin and warm, reduced to electricity and air.

Tima went still. The absolute stillness she did when something important was happening — every sense directed at one point. She held the phone (or held Steph's hand that held the phone) and listened. Her face changed the way a sky changes when the sun finds a gap in the cloud — slowly, from the inside.

"Papa," she said.

"Yes, it's me. I'm here. Are you having a good time with Steph?"

A pause. Tima looked at the phone. She looked at Steph. She looked back at the phone, as if trying to work out where the voice was coming from and why it was inside this small, flat object and not in the room where it belonged.

"Papa," she said again, softer.

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay? I'll come and get you tomorrow."

Tima held the phone in silence for a moment. Then she did something Steph wasn't expecting — she turned the phone around and held it up to Hoppy's face.

"Oppy," she said. Showing him. Letting the hippo hear. Because if Papa was in there, then Hoppy should hear him too, because Hoppy was important and so was Papa and the two most important things should know each other even through a phone.

Steph heard Erik make a sound — not a word, not a laugh. Something caught between the two. Something in the throat.

"Hi, Hoppy," Erik said.

Tima took the phone back. She pressed it against her own ear, hard, so hard that Steph gently adjusted the angle to stop her from pushing it through her skull. She listened to whatever Erik was saying — Steph couldn't hear it now, just the murmur — and then she held the phone out toward Steph.

She pushed it against Steph's cheek.

"Papa," she said. *You hear him too. He's in there. You should know.*

Steph took the phone. "She's showing you to everyone."

"I heard." His voice was different now — thicker, rounder, the voice of a man who has heard his daughter's voice through a phone on a Saturday afternoon and is trying to hold together.

"She's fine, Erik. She's happy. She's being very Tima about everything."

"What does that mean?"

"It means she's watching everything like she's taking notes and eating with her eyes closed and pointing at things I'd forgotten existed. It means she's fine."

A pause. "Thank you," he said. Simply. The way he always said it — not enough words, not elaborate, just the thing itself.

"Don't thank me. She's my girl too."