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Internally, I wince because the majority of Alana’s nightmares are very real.
“They’re just images our brains come up with while we’re sleeping.”
“Why not nice ones?” Daisy whimpers.
“I’m sure you have nice ones too,” Alana muses. “What’s your favorite thing to do?” she asks, changing the subject.
“Singing. Drawing.”
“And what’s your favorite thing to draw?”
“Bunny,” she says, clutching the stuffy that Ezra brought for her tighter to her chest. “A family,” she adds, making my heart shatter in my chest.
If I needed a reminder of why we were doing this, why we are here right now, then that is it.
“I dream of my sister sometimes, my mommy too,” Alana explains.
“I see Mommy. She’s so pwetty.”
“Aw, your mommy was so pretty, sweetheart.”
“Miss her.”
My chest compresses at her words.
“Nana too.”
“It’s okay to miss them. It’s okay to be sad.”
“I am sad.”
Shuffling up, Alana glances over as I sit next to her and wrap my arm around both of them.
“That’s why we’re here, Daisy,” I tell her.
“Don’t leave me.”
“That’s never going to happen, baby girl,” I promise her, leaning forward to press a kiss to her head. “Try to go back to sleep, it’s really late. We’ll keep all the scary dreams away.”
“Okay,” she whispers as her eyes close.
It only takes a few minutes for her breathing to even out.
“She’s gone,” Alana whispers.
“See, I told you that you’d be fantastic.”
A broken laugh spills from her lips.
“You think that was easy?”
“No. But I don’t think parenting is meant to be easy. The complete opposite, actually.”
“I thought life was going to get simpler after all this?” she muses.
“Nah, that would bore the pants off all of us.”
She laughs, but she doesn’t argue.
