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Her math wasn’t quite adding up. I smiled and reached for her shoulder. “Sweetie, I wasn’t gone for fifteen hours.”
She shirked away from me and sniffled. “I needed to—I needed to hug you and you were gone.”
“Does Grandma know where you are?” I rubbed her arm, awaiting some kind of explanation, but she ignored me. “Hey. What’s wrong? Why did you need me so badly? Why are you so upset?”
“Because!” She widened her eyes at me like I was impossibly stupid for not figuring this out. “I don’t like it when Grandma and Grandpa put me to bed. I get really sad. I get a cry stuck right here.” She touched the front of her throat. “I was scared that you weren’t coming home ever again.”
“Finley.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it. She scowled at me. “I’m sorry, but why wouldn’t I come home? Why would you even think I—?”
I stopped and swallowed, pressing my lips together. I knew exactly why. And though she resisted, I scooped her up onto my lap and held her against my chest. Thankfully, she clung to me tight and let me hold her. I kissed the top of her head and rubbed her back.
“Finley,” I whispered, pulling her hair off her shoulders. “I’ll always come home.”
“Not if you die.”
Fuck.
“I’m not going to die.” I held her a little tighter and began to rock my body from side to side with a soothing rhythm. “I’m not going to leave you. I’ll always be here for you, okay?”
She sniffled against my chest and used my flannel shirt as a tissue. I didn’t mind. I continued rocking her back and forth, unsure of what else to say—it was hard to find the words when my heart was breaking. It was everything I could do not to cry, too, but I had to keep it together. For her.
“I’m the only kid in my class who doesn’t have a mom.” This was the first time she’d ever spoken of her mom in such a way—the first time she’d ever said she didn’t have one. Before, it was always, “My mom lives far away.” This was new.
“Oh, Fin,” I said, “I’m sure you’re not the only one.”
“Yuh-huh. I asked everyone at recess the ‘nother day. Everybody has a mom. Emma even has two moms.”
“Well.” I cleared my throat—she had me there. “I bet Emma doesn’t have a cool dad.”
“Emma has two moms and a dad.”
That’s what I got for making an assumption. “Okay, I’m obviously not aware of Emma’s… familial situation. But what I’m saying is that all families are different. And while you don’t have a mom… here, with you… you’ve got me and Grandma and Grandpa. And you’ve got the best aunt who loves you so much, even if she does live far away.” I took a deep breath. “And you have Traci, too. There are so many people in your life who love you. Even—even Ms. Devin.”
I felt Finley nod against my chest. “Ms. Devin is really pretty and nice,” she said, playing with the buttons on my shirt.
“You’re right. She is.” I took a deep breath, squeezing her closer to my chest. She was quiet for a couple of minutes, and I thought she might have been drifting off to sleep, but she lifted her hand to twist my hair around her fingers the way she always did when she was smaller. I peered down at her open eyes—she was staring blankly at the wall. Lost in thought.
And then she asked me a question that nearly stopped my heart from beating in my chest.
“Do you think if my old mom could see that I’m a really good girl now, she’d come back?”
All the air escaped from my lungs. I brought my hand to my eyes, wishing like hell there was a script for this kind of thing. What could I possibly say to this child to comfort her? How could I even begin to explain? “Finley,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “She didn’t leave because of you. She left because there was something wrong with her, okay? It was never, ever, your fault.” I had told Finley all of this months ago, but evidently she didn’t believe me then. And she probably wasn’t believing me now.
I needed help.
“Hey.” I shifted her body in my arms so I could see her face better. “Finley, do you remember Dr. Janelle in Indianapolis?” She nodded. “What if I found someone like that here in Woodvale that you could talk to?”
“With a Lite Brite?”
I forced myself to smile. “I can’t guarantee they’ll have a Lite Brite in their office like Dr. Janelle, but people like her—they’re called therapists. I’ve talked to one before, and Grandma has one. They can help you figure out feelings that are really confusing. And all the feelings you have right now, they’re a little confusing, right?”
“Sometimes my feelings are all jumbled up like this—” She wiggled her entire body and wagged her tongue, making a goofy noise. I waited patiently for her to stop.
“Exactly. Sometimes I can help you with those jumbled-up feelings, but a therapist—that’s their job, Finley. They make it all fit together like a puzzle. They don’t magically make the sadness go away, but they can, like, give you some strategies to make it a little easier to handle. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“I guess so. I want to see Dr. Janelle, though.”
“You can’t, she’s—” I stopped. Why couldn’t she? Indianapolis wasn’t that far away. If the kid had to miss a half day of school every now and then to talk to a therapist, who the fuck cared? “You know what? I’ll see if she still has a slot for us.”
