Page 95 of Kylie

Kylie

Kate and I were sitting on the front porch when Travis and Gage returned with the truck and trailer, weighed down with more of the things from the storage unit. Apparently, they’d kept all of my things rather than donate them to charity. According to Gage, that had been the plan, but he’d been unable to let go.

I probably shouldn’t have found relief in that explanation, but I did. I was still trying to come to terms with them moving on, and though it was getting a bit easier to move around the house and not feel like a complete stranger, I still felt as though I didn’t quite belong. The house was no longer home. Not to me. Not yet. Right now, it was their home, and I was merely a guest, invited to come in and stay a while. I figured at some point it would be my home again. Or rather, I hoped it would.

“Do you wanna keep all your stuff?” Kate asked from beside me.

“Probably not all of it,” I admitted, peering down at my little girl, who wasn’t quite so little anymore. She wasn’t yet eight, but I got the sense she’d grown up a lot in the past couple of years. What she’d been through had changed her. It pained me that I hadn’t been there for her. And thinking about that reignited my hatred for Martin Calloway.

Forcing him from my thoughts, I took a deep breath. I would deal with him later. For the moment, I wanted to enjoy time with my daughter.

The one thing that had stayed the same was Kate’s sweetness. And her beauty. In fact, she’d gotten even prettier in the past two years. Her dark hair was longer, her eyes more almond-shaped like Gage’s.

“I missed you,” I told Kate as I looked out at what Travis and Gage were doing. “I thought about you all the time.”

“Did you really?”

“All the time,” I assured her. “I thought about all the things we used to do. Sometimes I would imagine you were there with me because I didn’t want to be alone.” I smiled as I remembered. “You would tell me to hang on a little while longer.”

“That’s what you told me,” Kate said.

I looked at her. “When?”

“In my dreams. You would tell me to hang on a little while longer, so I did.” Her dark brown eyes met mine. “I knew you were comin’ home.”

A sob erupted in my chest at the thought of my sweet baby clinging to hope. She’d had no idea that I was alive, but somehow our love for each other was strong enough to travel the distance.

“Don’t be sad, Mommy,” Kate whispered.

I chuckled softly. “I’m not sad, baby. I’m happy. And grateful to be home. I’ve missed so much.”

“Do you wanna see pictures?”

Wiping a tear away, I nodded. “I would love to.”

“Okay.” She hopped up from the swing. “Stay there.”

I laughed as she took off down the steps, making a beeline for her fathers. She ran straight to Gage. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but a moment later, Gage passed over his phone. Kate planted a quick kiss on his cheek and then ran back toward me, a huge grin on her face.

She took her seat beside me once more, and I divided my attention between watching her pull up what she wanted to see and Travis and Gage unstrapping their haul.

“This was durin’ the snowpocalypse,” she said, turning the phone so we could both see. “We made a snowmommy.”

My eyebrows jumped. “A snowmommy?”

“Yep. So much cooler than a snowman.”

I laughed, looking at the images on the screen. The snowmommy, as she referred to it, was rather impressive despite its lack of snow.

“Are those my sunglasses?”

Kate nodded. “And your scarf. The rainbow one. Remember that?”

I giggled. “Oh, yeah. I remember.”

“Dad takes lots of pictures,” Kate explained. “So we’ve got a little bit of everything.”

“Do you have a phone yet?” I asked, curious since she seemed so adept at handling that one.