“Look at me, Momma!”
I hugged myself across my chest and pasted a smile on my face, doing everything I could to stay upright.
“I see you, Butterfly. You’re such a big girl.”
She whooshed to the bottom. Little feet hit the ground and she was off running again, climbing right back up the steps to do it again.
What they say must be true.
Children are resilient.
It was proven in the unending smile that graced my daughter’s face.
In the gentle way she hugged me in the moments when I was certain I couldn’t withstand one second more.
In the sure and indisputable way she promised, “Everything’s gonna be all right, Momma. Don’t cry.”
Even though we were so far from home.
Surrounded by so many people except for the one we’d come here for.
Buried in questions and agony and the dwindling hope Sebastian would find his way back to us.
Her tiny spirit exhibited the greatest show of strength.
I desperately tried to hang onto it.
Faith.
But it was difficult when the only thing we were met with were roadblocks and setbacks and disappointments.
Four days had passed since I’d gone to my mother. Four days since I’d walked away and not heard another word. Four days of Kenny scrambling and Anthony encouraging, and all the guys doing everything they could to stand up and stand in, trying to make me and Kallie feel at home when I’d never felt so alone.
Four days of going through the motions. Four days of pretending I could make it through this.
In that time, I’d not even been granted clearance to visit him.
God. I just wanted to see his face. To touch along the lines and the curves and the scars. To see that he was okay and then maybe I could be okay, too.
The absolute worst part? It had also been four days of worrying what Martin might be planning to do, constantly looking over my shoulder, scared I would find those fears were valid.
But still somehow sure he would bide his time. Unwilling to strike in the middle of this public battle.
Now we were doing everything we could to strike first.
“Be careful, Kallie Bug,” I warned when she started climbing a metal ladder to the elevated bouncy bridge stretched between two play towers.
From the third step, she grinned back at me. “I’m bein’ so, so careful, Momma. Did you know I have to learn to climb way up high in the sky ’cause that’s were butterflies fly and I’m gonna be in big girl school? And I’m not scared at all, at all.”
Okay.
I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that even with everything I was going through, my daughter still held the power to bring a smile to my face.
“She’s beautiful.” The hoarse voice coming from behind froze my blood, and I went rigid when I felt her approach, the instinct to safeguard and shield flipping to high alert.
But somehow I felt the resignation in her step.
The surrender.
My attention remained fixed on my daughter as my mother erased the space and came to stand directly beside me.
Locks of her stringy hair whipped in the wind.
Neither of us said anything for the longest time. The silence screamed back all the pain she had caused, my heart aching in a way it’d never ached before.
Her voice cracked in the December air. “They were never supposed to hurt you.”
My body quaked with the intrusion of her words.
“I would never have given the okay for that. They were just supposed to shake you up. Scare you into making the decision you needed to make.”
My eyes dropped closed as if it could shield me from this brutality.
She’d known.
But I already knew that, didn’t I? Still, the confirmation struck me like the sting of a lash.
Something helpless seeped into her tone. “By then, I was in deep.” Her mouth pinched as if the confession was sour. “Got myself mixed up in things I never anticipated, but by the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late.”