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His figure darkened so much that it looked like a shadow before the darkness entirely swallowed me. His face was decaying, his mouth opening wide into a sea of teeth that dropped one by one. His eyes were just sockets in a face with sloughing skin.
I felt that prickly fear all over my body, shuddering through me in waves. I tried to breathe through it, to remind myself it was just Jeremy. But I felt a hand on my shoulder, and before I knew it, the bone in that hand was crumbling underneath my grip.
Jeremy came into focus again, and I saw myself out of my body, holding his arm behind his back as sweat from the pain rolled down his face.
“Go ahead and hit me, but you know deep down that you can’t take care of her the way I can. You can’t even take care of yourself. You’re damaged.”
For the first time since I could remember, I had pulled myself out of a flashback. I let go of him, and he jumped back. While he cradled his hand, and walked backwards toward his car, he spat out, “I hope you two have fun. With her daddy issues and your savior complex, you should make a perfect pair.”
I watched his retreating form, something I hoped to never see again, before turning to find the two most important people in the world to me.
thirty-nine
Delia
The hum of people walking through the hallways, of the little kids screaming their joy at each other and parents trying to reel them in, was unsettling as I looked for my own kid. Notmykid, but the kid I was responsible for.
I knew which direction she had gone, and I had seen her tutu disappear around a corner. I looked through the glass of a classroom door and saw her little form under a desk. I paused, my heart twisting, and opened the door.
Corinne’s red curls tumbled around her shoulders and hid most of her face. When she saw me come in, she flinched and turned her head farther away from me. “Go away,” she said in a tiny voice, with little conviction.
“Hey,” I whispered, crouching down beside her, my hands gripping the edge of the desk. “I’m sorry that we upset you.”
Corinne peeked up at me with one eye, hesitant, before burying her face into her arms again. “I just… I miss my mom,” she said finally, her voice small and cracked.
A pang of sadness cut through me. I hadn’t expected that. I expected her to say she didn’t want to share her dad, but this was something else, something deeper.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and sat down completely, making the desk rattle and clang as I did.
I hesitated for just a moment before reaching out and gently rubbing her back. “That’s okay. You’re allowed to miss her. Missing her is a part of your love for her.”
After a long pause, she let out a shaky breath. “It’s just… sometimes I feel like everyone’s forgetting her,” she admitted quietly. “Even Daddy. He never talks about her anymore. And now… now you’re gonna have a baby, and the baby’s gonna have a mom.”
Her words hit me square in the chest, and for a second, I couldn’t breathe. My heart ached for her, for the little girl who had lost her mother far too young and was still trying to figure out her place in a world that didn’t feel fair. I kept my hand on her back, letting her know I was still there.
“I promise your daddy didn’t forget about her. He talks about her to me.”
“Well, he doesn’t with me.”
“Mmm. I’ll have to remind him to do that, then. I’m not trying to replace her, Corinne,” I said softly, my voice careful and measured. “No one could ever do that. But I could do my best to feel like a mom.”
She was quiet for a second, and I didn’t push her. I just stayed next to her, waiting for her to be ready to share. “Like how?” she asked quietly.
I exhaled slowly, a tiny glimmer of relief in the distance. “Well, I could cook and take you shopping, and we could talk about boys. You can’t do that with your dad, right?”
A small smile tugged at her lips, and she sat up, coming out from hiding under the desk. “Right,” she agreed quietly.
“And you know what a new baby means? It means you’ll have a special relationship with them that no one else in the family would. Because you’d be a big sister.”
She gasped, as though it hadn’t occurred to her before. “I’d be a big sister,” she repeated, her voice filled with awe.
“Yeah, neither of us gets to be a big sister,” I said, my voice rising as I saw her excitement. “And you know what? That’s a really big deal. Your little brother or sister is going to look up to you so much.”
She frowned, her little nose wrinkling. “But what if I’m not good at it?”
I blinked, surprised. “Not good at what?”
“Being a sister,” she whispered. “What if I mess it up?”