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No. No, no, no!
This had to be a mistake!
I hopped up and ran toward my dad, dodging the arms of my mom, squirming out of the hold of some security guy, and slammed my chest into my daddy’s, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Daddy, what’s happening?”
“I’m sorry, Luna.”
No! This couldn’t be real!
When hands tried to pry me away from my dad’s arms, I swatted them away, my high-pitched cries the only sound in the courtroom.
I’m never letting him go. If they take him, they have to take me. I can’t live without him! I can’t live without his pancakes in the morning. I can’t live without him playing tag with me outside, or barbequing hamburgers on the grill just the way I like it, or hugging me and loving me and being with me every single day. The only thing that got me through this trial was the firm hope that soon, he’d return to us.
But now they were stealing him from us.
“Daddy has to go away for a little while,” he said.
“People said if you’re found guilty, you’ll never get out,” I cried.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” Daddy whispered. His large hands, callused and warm, gently cradled my small face, thumbs brushing away the salty tears that dripped over my lip and onto my tongue.
“You’ll be okay,” he said.
“No. I won’t. This hurts too bad, Daddy. I’m scared. I don’t want to live without you.”
“Your mother will be with you. And we can visit all the time, okay? I’m still here, honey. And I’ll always be with you. In there.” He tapped the spot over my heart.
No.
“Will they let us hug each other if you go to prison?” My voice trembled harder.
His breath quivered. “I don’t know.”
There had to be a way out of this!
“Run with me, Daddy,” I whispered desperately in his ear. “We can hide somewhere they’ll never find us.”
We can sprint out of this courthouse and into the woods, and then we can spend the night and make a fire and wait until people aren’t looking for him and walk to the next town and get on a bus and go far, far away.
“It doesn’t work like that, honey.” Dad’s eyes overflowed with tears, and he tried to smile the way he did whenever he tried to calm me down.
A security guard grabbed my arm, his hand as cold as his heart.
“No!” I shouted.
But the guy wrenched me away, my fingers stretching out for my father—reaching, grasping for him, my chest ice cold, robbed of his warmth.
“Daddy!” I kicked wildly in the air as the guy held me to his torso, unable to stop them from making my dad stand up and start walking toward the door.
“I love you, honey.”
“Daddy, don’t go!”
When the heavy door clanged shut behind him, my sobs echoed in the courtroom with the deafening finality that left an excruciating void.
My father was gone, ripped from my world, and I was cast into an alternate reality, a nightmare I never woke up from.
