The rash started on the second morning of the road trip.
Ava woke up in the hotel room outside Cincinnati and said her stomach hurt. I figured it was the gas station hot dog from the night before. Then she pushed up her sleeve and showed me the rash, red and blotchy, climbing from her wrist toward her elbow.
"It's itchy," she said.
We were three states from home. I had planned the whole week for months: the aquarium on day one, the ballpark on day two, a lake cabin for the last two nights. Ava had packed her swim goggles even though there was no pool on the itinerary. She said you never knew.
Being a single dad means you over-plan the good weeks. You make the itinerary, you book the refundable rooms, you pack the first-aid kit like you're preparing for an expedition. I'd done all of it. None of it had included a rash.
I got antihistamine cream from the front desk. The clerk pointed me to a drugstore two blocks down, and I bought the cream and a pack of cold washcloths and a thermometer I didn't need. The pharmacist took one look at Ava's arm and said, "Could be heat rash," which was not helpful but was said with confidence.
By noon the rash had reached her shoulder.
"Maybe we should find an urgent care," I said.
"It's not that bad," Ava said. She was ten and already stubborn about doctors the way some kids are stubborn about bedtime. She spent the afternoon in the hotel pool β the indoor one, shallow and chlorinated β with the washcloth pressed to her neck between swims, and I watched her from a plastic chair and told myself it was fine.
By dinner it was on her neck, and she'd gone quiet in the way that scared me more than the crying would have. Ava was never quiet. She narrated everything β the license plates, the clouds, the song on the radio. That evening she just sat in the booth at the diner and pushed her fries around and asked if we could go back to the hotel.
The urgent care doctor looked at the rash for about ten seconds. "Could be a food reaction," she said. "Could be contact dermatitis. Keep her cool, keep it clean, come back if it spreads to her face."
It spread to her collarbone by morning.
I canceled the rest of the trip in the hotel parking lot while Ava slept in the back seat with a cold washcloth on her neck. The aquarium tickets were nonrefundable. The lake cabin kept half the deposit. I didn't care. I just wanted her home, in her own bed, with her own pediatrician ten minutes away instead of three states.
The drive took seven hours. I stopped twice so she could stretch her legs and once because she felt carsick, and she never gets carsick. She slept most of the way with her head against the window, her goggles still in her lap like she hadn't given up on the trip. Every rest stop I checked the rash. It hadn't reached her face. That was the only good news I had.
We pulled into Alder Court a little after four in the afternoon. The sky was still bright, but the house was dark. All the blinds were shut. The mail had piled up by the front door, and one of the flyers had blown against the garage door and stuck there.
It looked like nobody lived there.
I carried Ava's duffel bag inside. The air was stale and warm from a week of shut windows. I opened the back door to let the place breathe, and that was when I noticed the quiet from the backyard.
Tomorrow was Ava's birthday. Ten years old. Nine kids coming at ten in the morning, and the pool was the whole plan β Marco Polo, cannonball contests, the inflatable flamingo she'd picked out herself at the party store. The cake was already in the fridge. The goodie bags were stacked on the dining room table, each one tied with blue ribbon.
I told myself I'd go out and check the water. Skim the leaves. Make sure the pump was running right.
I walked to the kitchen window instead and just stood there for a minute, looking at the empty backyard in the late light, the pool water flat and blue and waiting.
Something felt wrong. I couldn't name it. I stood there anyway, my hand on the windowsill, watching the water.