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Taking over Ezra’s spot and leaning back against the window, he crosses his thick arms in front of him.
“She’s… she’s going to be okay after what she’s…”
Silence fills the room as we all fight to answer that question.
“She’s three, I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Alana finally says.
“Do you remember anything from when you were three?” I ask JD.
Out of all of us, he probably had the roughest start in life. If he doesn’t remember then we might just stand a chance here.
“Uh…” he starts, which fills me with joy. “I have memories of being little, but I’m not sure exactly what age I was.
“I remember faces. Some kind ones, some not so much.”
“Shit,” Reid hisses, scrubbing his hand down his face.
“What are we going to do?” JD asks, sharing my concern.
“There isn’t much we can do. She’s witnessed and experienced it now. All we can do is be here for what she needs, to help her process it. However three-year-olds go about doing that,” Alana says softly, her pain for the little girl before us palpable.
“We’re keeping her though, right?” JD asks as if it isn’t already a given.
My lips part to agree, but it’s Reid who speaks first.
“Yes.”
My eyes shoot to him, and I’d be tempted to say that Alana and JD’s do too.
“What?” he asks. “I know none of us are exactly parent material, but she’s not going in the system. No fucking way.”
“Us at our worst is better than that,” JD agrees.
“And I’m not having her pushed around the system. She’s already lost too much in her young life. She needs people who are going to be there, protect her, no matter what. I’ve already failed?—”
“No,” Alana says, walking over and dropping into my lap.
I took over the chair in the room when JD got up for a piss, and I’m glad I did when Alana wraps her arms around my neck.
“You haven’t failed her, Mav. You’ve been what her and Sheila needed.”
As she says Sheila’s name, grief shoots through my system.
She deserved better than the end we witnessed today.
She was a fighter. A goddamn warrior.
She should have been the one slaying the enemy, not the other way around.
I blow out a slow, pained breath.
“What has gone before, doesn’t matter now. It’s what we do from here on out that does.”
“I’ll call Doc? Get him to check her over in the morning.” Reid states.
“She seemed okay earlier,” Alana muses as she climbs from my lap and gently sits on the edge of the bed.
Silence falls over us as the three of us watch her reach out and carefully graze her knuckles over Daisy's chubby cheek.
