I'd thought I was prepared for anything, but clearly I hadn't imagined that she would have gone and gotten married to someone else. "How old is the daughter now?" I force myself to ask.
"Records show that she is six. She's in first grade."
I reach for the report, knowing Jimmy would have been thorough. As I knew I would, I see a picture of the child clipped inside the file. A little girl in pigtails smiles back at me. She has Alice's hair. Her eyes are green, though. She's adorable.
My chest tightens with unspeakable grief. If things had been different, would this have been my daughter?
I close the file, unable to look at her anymore.
My mind and my heart are at war. Alice married a human. She lay in bed with him. She let him touch her, and she conceived his child.
When I took Alice's virginity, she was shy, inexperienced. Did he teach her about her body, about what drove her crazy? Did she love him?
