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“You were screaming and slapping around. You scared them to death.”
“I…yeah. Nate told me I had them. I never remember. He was trying to help me with them, so it’s been a while.”
Caden huffs, running a hand through his messy hair. He looks like he has a hundred things to ask, but instead he just says, “Go back to bed.”
I head out for groceries early in the morning. When I drop Caden off at Billie’s house, I don’t bother going in. He said he was staying there for the rest of the week. After that, I make my way to my local supermarket. I don’t like leaving my mom with the girls anymore. I realized by her being here for almost two months that I hate her. Plain and simple. There is so much resentment between us that we’ll never be able to love each other.
She left me with my dad, knowing full well what he was capable of.
And I remind her of him. She said it to me while she was drunk.
Your stupid hair and your stupid eyes. You both got everything from him and nothing from me. Even the way you look. Tough. With that don’t-fuck-with-me face. It’s disgusting.
I huff for the hundredth time today as I put my keys in the door with a paper bag propped on my waist. I need to tell her to leave, and she needs to leave today.
I find the girls at their little table in the living room. It’s a bright blue plastic table with chairs that can only fit toddlers. Lia is giggling, finding it hilarious that she’s coloring everything outside of the lines, and Livie is hyper focused on coloring the flower in all yellow. Only yellow. Every single petal, yellow. She’s going extremely slow, biting her tongue with her nose practically touching the paper. And she’s pressing so hard that the marker is making a screeching sound as she moves it. I’m surprised she hasn’t ripped the paper yet.
“Mommy!” Lia exclaims. Instead of running to me, she tries to stand up on her chair, but I stop her with a pointed look.
“What did I say about standing on the chair?”
“No!” She imitates my stern voice. “No, Celia! No!” With a giggle, she sits back down.
I give them both a kiss on the head and pull out two small boxes of apple juice I got for them.
“Here. Because you’ve been such good, patient girls for Mommy.”
Coming back here has meant being pulled out of preschool in West Virginia. I’m going to put them back to school here after the Christmas break. I just wanted some time for them to adapt to being back in this house.
“Thank you, Mommy,” Lia mumbles, already back to coloring like a maniac.
Livie calmly takes hers and hugs my leg before showing me the straw. I put it in the bottle for her while I talk to Lia.
“Where’s Nanna?”
“In the kitchen with the mister.”
My spine straightens, muscles freezing. “What mister, Celia?”
“The mister with the drawings.” She draws nonsense on her sheets and points at it. “Like this! On his arms.”
Who the fuck did my mother bring to the house? For a second, I imagine Sam. Nate’s enforcer came to kill us all.
“You stay here with your sister. Do not move from here, got it?”
“Got it!”
I try not to run to the kitchen, so I don’t alarm them, but I’m quick on my feet, my body vibrating from the inside out.
When I push the kitchen door open, I stop dead in my tracks.
The bag of groceries drops to the floor.
And my heart explodes into a mix of anxiety and relief, sending butterflies and shards of ice to my stomach.
“There she is. My little sunflower.”
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