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The words that I’d bottled up for months and months spilled, but not without trouble. I swiped away the tears that crashed against my skin before the breeze turned them into icicles.
“Are you her—is this for real? Have you come back to me? Have you come to stay?”
Nodding, I assured her I wasn’t going anywhere.
“I’m ready to make good on them promises I made to you, if that’s aight with you?”
Glacier nodded, letting me know that everything she’d said in that letter twenty-five months ago was still true.
“Yes. Yes. Of course. Everything I said in my letters, I meant. Every word.”
Shame consumed me. Upon recognition, she sighed.
“You didn’t read them, did you?”
“Only one.”
I watched her heart break all over again. My stomach turned.
“I’m sorry, Mommas. I ju– I just had to keep my head on straight in there. Reading anything from you would’ve made that time much harder than it was.”
“Or made you realize you belonged here and not in there.”
“Or that,” I admitted.
“So much was in those letters, Makai.”
“And, I promise to read every one of them. They’re in the car.”
My promises didn’t soothe the ache I’d caused.
“What’s the matter, Mommas? I’m sorry.”
I swiped tears from her eyes with my thumb. Seeing her cry was unnerving.
“I know, Makai, it’s just that–”
“Talk to me, baby. Tell me what’s really on your mind. Don’t spare me.”
“I don’t wanna break your heart,” she cried, tears streaming from her big, glossy eyes.
“Then don’t,” I begged, “Not if you don’t have to.”
She widened the door, exposing Ghost and Midnight. Just as she’d asked, they sat. However, it wasn’t their presence that brought me to my knees. It was the faces of the two deep brown children clinging to Glacier’s right leg.
“Daddy?” One of the two smiled up at Mommas, seeking confirmation.
“Yes, baby.” Glacier stared directly at me. “Madelyn and Makenna, Daddy. Daddy, Madeleyn, and Makenna.”
It wasn’t her. She wasn’t the culprit. It was me. I’d broken my heart in five million pieces that could not and would not ever be repaired. Staring at the faces that resembled my own, thinking about how much I’d missed, gutted me.
The emotions that I thought I had control over gained control of me. The levees broke and I became the blubbering mess that could not speak. My hands, they had never failed me. I swooped both tiny bodies into my arms as I pushed forward into the house.
I searched the air, blindly feeling for Glacier. Her hand joined mine as I watched the girls acclimate themselves with every feature on my face using their tiny hands. Everything I never knew I wanted, everything I never knew I needed was at my fingertips.
“I’m sorry.”
“You”re here, now. That’s all that matters.”
The end.
