I hold up the bear. “This little guy.”
She hasn’t mentioned him, so I’m not sure how she’s going to react. Maybe she won’t care. Maybe Kassian stole that part of her, the part that believed in magic, the part of her that loved her bear like he was real. Maybe she won’t want him. Maybe she’ll be upset. Maybe she’ll think he let her down, because she always believed the damn bear would protect us. Maybe... maybe... maybe... but I hope it isn’t so. I need her to still have some of that innocence she deserves.
She looks at it, her eyes widening, as I hold my breath. It takes her a second before she even reacts at all. “Buster!”
She sprints out onto the porch, snatching the bear from my hand, before flinging herself at me, nearly knocking me down. I laugh as she clings to both me and the bear.
“Mommy, it’s Buster!” she squeals. “He came back!”
“He did.”
“Where did you find him?”
“Right here,” I say. “He was sitting on the porch, waiting for us, this morning when I woke up.”
She smiles, a wide kind of smile. Her whole face lights up. Sitting down beside me on the step, pressing up against me, she studies the bear in her lap. Her fingers run along the messy, dark stitches holding parts of the bear together. “Somebody gave him surgery. They saved him from Daddy!”
I try to keep a straight face, but I grimace. Daddy. The man never deserved that title.
“Or,” I say, nudging her, “maybe Buster saved himself.”
“Maybe,” she agrees, pausing before adding, “but he didn’t give himself his surgery.”
“How do you know?”
She gives me a look, like I’m being ridiculous. “Because he can’t.”
“Why not?”
“He doesn’t have no thumbs. He only has his paws.”
“Oh.” I glance at the bear. Can’t really argue with that logic. She was always too smart for her own good. “Well, in that case, somebody else certainly gave him surgery, but it looks like he still needs some more work.”
He’s still missing his right eye.
Needs a good scrubbing, too.
He’s filthy.
“Daddy didn’t like Buster,” she says. “He put him in his fire because he said I was being bad, and then I couldn’t have him back until I said I loved him, but then he didn’t even believe me when I did, so I never got him again.”
She frowns, poking her bottom lip out.
I have no idea what to say, how I’m supposed to handle this, how I’m supposed to explain it to her so she’ll understand. I was never exactly equipped to be a mother, but this is so out of my realm of expertise. I’m terrified of messing her up, of her growing up traumatized. I don’t have a little Dr. Phil in my pocket to walk me through these things, so I’m just going to be real with her, because honesty is the best policy, right?
“You didn’t deserve that, sunshine,” I say. “Everything he did, no matter what it was, it wasn’t your fault. You’re not bad, and he shouldn’t have done those things, okay?”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“I’m serious,” I tell her. “And you don’t have to call him ‘Daddy.’ You can, if you want, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to call him anything.”
“He told me I have to.”
“I figured, but you don’t.”
“But what if he gets mad?” she asks. “What if he takes Buster away?”
“He won’t,” I say. “I promise.”
“But—”
I gently grasp her chin, tilting her face up. “No buts. He’ll never get mad at you, never take Buster, never show up here again... he’s gone, sunshine. Forever. So you can call him whatever you want, or you can call him nothing at all. It’s okay.”
She stares at me for a moment. “Did he never get his heart or something?”
My brow furrows. “What?”
“Tin Man,” she says. “That’s what he was called. I heard you say he had no heart, like the Tin Man in that movie.”
My stomach sinks. “Uh, I don’t know. Maybe he had a heart, but he didn’t show it to me, so I couldn’t see it. But it doesn’t matter, because it’s all over. We won’t have to play Hide & Seek anymore, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, “because I don’t want to play ever.”
“Me, either.” I smile. “What do you want to do?”
She shrugs.
“Come on, there has to be something,” I say. “We’ll get out of this house, just you and me.”
“And Buster, too?”
“And Buster.”
“Can we go eat hot dogs? And ride that big wheel thing? You know, the one that goes whoosh, whoosh, whoosh with the lights and the music?” She holds her hand out, making circles. Ferris wheel. “They have one at that place with the beach...”
Coney Island.
“I, uh... sure. If that’s what you want.”
She nods.
“Well, then... how about we go get dressed and make a day of it?”
She throws herself at me again. “You’re the best, Mommy!”
My stomach is in knots as she gets up and runs into the house. Coney Island isn’t where I’d choose to be, but whatever makes her happy.
Where I’d choose to be, if I had a choice, is at a white house with a picket fence surrounding it… just not this one.
We spend the entire afternoon down in Coney Island, riding rides and playing games and stuffing our faces full of hot dogs and ice cream and cotton candy. She’s glowing, like a weight has been lifted off of her small shoulders, so much my little girl again, carefree and happy. Not broken.
I’m not going to say she’s over it. That’s a lie. She may never get over a lot of what happened, but she’ll learn to live with the memories she can’t forget, because she’s resilient.
She’s definitely my child.
It’s early evening when we stroll through nearby shops, her lugging Buster under her arm in a headlock, as I carry her new little friend—a strange looking rainbow-striped monkey she won shooting clowns with tiny water guns. We end up in a little bookstore, aisles piled high with used books. Sasha stays where I can see her, never leaving my line of sight, as she scours through stacks of children’s books. I pick up a book of fairy tales, flipping through it to see if Sasha might like any of the stories when one catches my eye.
The Juniper Tree.
I know that one.
Well, I remember it, vaguely.
Lorenzo told me the story.
His favorite fairy tale.
Leaning against the shelf, I skim the story, realizing quite quickly Lorenzo did a horrible job of summarizing. He stopped midway through, never telling me how it ended. Some stories don’t have happy endings, he’d said.
That lying son of a—
“Mommy?”
I glance up from the book, looking at Sasha. “Yes?”
“Can I have this?” she asks, holding up a book, this one also about fairy tales, but hers has pictures and color and is made by Disney, unlike the crazy shit I’m reading. “Please?”
I probably don’t have to tell you that there’s no way I could ever tell her no right now. No matter what the girl asks for, it’s a resounding ‘hell yeah’. If I can’t afford it, I’ll fucking steal it, but being as the book has a price tag of a dollar, I think we’ll be just fine.
Lorenzo made sure of that.