Later was now, and she had no good answers.
“I know,” Sunny acknowledged, not attempting to defend the indefensible. “I’m so sorry, Maddie.”
Maddie’s expression hardened, Kate’s determination flashing across her features. Without another word, she turned and ran from the room, her small feet pounding down the hall.
“Maddie!” Sunny called after her, instinctively rising to follow, but Hailey’s grip tightened, small fingers digging into Sunny’s clothes with desperate strength.
“Don’t go,” Hailey begged, her words muffled against Sunny’s stomach. “Please don’t go. I’ll be good. I’ll clean my room every day. I’ll eat all my vegetables. I promise!”
Sunny’s throat closed with anguish as she knelt again, trying gently to disentangle herself from Hailey’s grip. “Sweetie, youaregood. You’re perfect just the way you are. This isn’t about anything you did or didn’t do.”
But Hailey only clung tighter, as if by sheer physical force she could prevent what was happening. Her small body shook with the force of her sobs, her face red and blotchy with distress.
Unbidden, a memory surfaced from Sunny’s own childhood — herself at seven, clinging to her foster mother’s skirt as the woman tried to explain Sunny was going back now that her “real baby” had been born. The hollow platitudes, the gentle but firm removal of Sunny’s desperate hands, the way the woman wouldn’t meet her eyes as she walked out the door.
Now Sunny was on the other side of that scene, inflicting the very trauma she had sworn never to cause.
A soft creak of floorboards alerted her to another presence. Sunny looked up to see Liam standing in the doorway, drawn by the commotion. He took in the scene before him — abandoned breakfast, spilled juice, Hailey wrapped around Sunny’s legs, both of them on the floor in tears.
For a fleeting moment, their eyes met across the room. Sunny saw something flicker in his gaze — doubt, pain, shame, maybe even the desire to stop this — before his expression shuttered again. He remained frozen in the doorway, hands at his sides, neither retreating nor approaching.
His silence was its own form of confirmation. This was happening. He wouldn’t intervene. A small noise from the hallway drew their attention.
Sunny
Maddie had returned, clutching two objects in her small hands. She approached slowly, her expression composed in a way no six-year-old’s should ever have to be.
She stopped a few feet away, her chin raised with fragile dignity, and extended her offerings.
“So you don’t forget us,” she said quietly, “when you find a new family.”
In her hands were the beaded bracelet she had made for Sunny during arts and crafts, and a framed photograph — the four of them at the beach during their Caribbean vacation, all sunburned smiles and windblown hair, arms wrapped around each other like they belonged together.
Something vital broke inside Sunny at the sight. The girls didn’t see her leaving as protection or sacrifice. They saw only what it was. Rejection. Abandonment. Another adult erased from their life.
All her rationalizations — that she was doing this for their benefit, that removing herself from the equation would restore their stability — crumbled to dust in the face of Maddie’s simple offering.
“Oh, sweetheart,” Sunny whispered, her voice cracking. “I’m not — I would never forget you. Either of you. You’re in my heart forever.”
“Then why are you going?” Maddie challenged, still holding out the items “If you love us, why won’t you stay?”
The question— so simple, so devastating in its logic — had no good answer. How could Sunny explain the complexities of adult relationships, the pressures from the outside world, the sacrifice of love for practical concerns, to a child who saw only in absolutes?
“Because I love you,” she tried, the words sounding hollow even to her own ears. “Sometimes… sometimes love means doing the hardest thing imaginable because you believe it’s what’s best.”
“That’s stupid,” Maddie declared, with the brutal honesty of childhood. “If you love someone, you stay with them.”
Liam finally stepped fully into the room, clearing his throat. “Girls,” he said, his voice tight. “Sunny and I have talked about this. It’s for the best.”
Maddie’s head whipped around, her accusatory gaze now fixed on her father. The betrayal in her eyes was palpable as she looked from him to Sunny and back again. Liam couldn’t maintain eye contact, his gaze dropping to the floor.
“You want her to go?” Maddie asked, disbelief coloring her tone.
“That’s not—” Liam began, then stopped, swallowing hard. “It’s complicated, Mads. There are things happening that you’re too young to understand.”
“I understand that you’re letting her go away,” Maddie said, her voice rising. “Just like you let Mommy go away!”
The words landed like a punch to the jaw. Liam flinched, his face draining of color. Sunny gasped, reaching instinctively toward Maddie.
