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"What? No! She hates the day care. Bring her here."
"Babe, I...I would, but the last thing I want is to make Rita's day any less bearable."
"Wait," she said, and I could hear muffled sounds. "Bring her here. You're still not allowed in the house though."
Great, Rita was repulsed by the sight of me. Awesome.
"She doesn't have to go through this anymore, Wendy. I feel like crap for doing it in the first place."
This whole fucking nightmare I put her through was sick and twisted. I always knew that, but she was too much of a miracle to let go. The last thing I could do was respect her boundaries or what was left of them.
"Sullivan, she's crumbling, and part of that is happening because she misses Chelsea. She woke up three times last night to check on her...and went back to her room sulking when she realized the baby is not here. Please."
...And my heart was crumbling with her, but it built up at the same speed. To think she held so much love for my daughter after hearing from Avery the way I did today was the best treatment any doctor could give for the bitterness in me. She gave a fuck still, and this was the silver lining I'd been desperately looking for.
"If this is what Rita wants."
"It's what she wants and what she needs...and what you need."
The hazelnut flavored coffee Wendy picked up from Starbucks tasted like a sweet, milky shit, but I was grateful for it anyway. My body recognized the trails of caffeine buried under all this sugar and embraced it.
Today was even worse than yesterday. Yesterday, I saw my beautiful life falling to pieces like a sandcastle hit by a torpedo, but now, I really had to live in this fucking reality, and I didn’t like it. Physically, my body had given up on me. I was so tired, I was actually hurting, but I couldn't force myself to fall into a deep sleep.
While sniffing my coffee cup, trying to get high on the energy and put myself together, the Monroes walked in, side by side, both wearing one of those bad-news-don't-kill-us smiles.
"What?" I asked, slightly panicking.
With her hands up, Jessica comes closer and sits next to me.
"So, James is on his way here." I didn’t have time to panic because she jumped to cut my reaction short. "He's not staying, just dropping Chelsea off. He's been called in for emergency surgery."
Oh, right. I kept forgetting that outside the walls of his home, he was this God who had the weight of many lives on his shoulder.
"Wait, is he...is he bringing the baby?" My heart felt like I just pushed a huge rock off of it. I got to see Chelsea. At least one more time, I got to see her. Oh, I could start singing right now, and God knew how tone deaf I was.
"He didn’t have a baby sitter for the day and...look, if you don't wanna see her, I get it. I don't like it, but I get it. We'll keep her away..."
"Away...no! I really want to see her." My whisper cut the tension in the room.
"Ok, good, because I think he just pulled into our driveway. He is only going to walk to the door so feel free to hide here."
The doorbell rang, and I let out the air I was holding in my lungs. It was so weird. I was still mad, furious, but now that he was so close, I could breathe again. I didn’t want to see him; actually, I didn’t think I could ever look at him again without trying to castrate the man, but...it was just good to know he was around. There was so much ugly in my past, so much wretchedness, and he came into my life to fill it with all this graceful calmness. If he was here, that meant the past couldn’t get to me.
A shiver jolted through me just thinking about what could happen if Trujillo ever got his hands on me again. Going back was not an option; he had no problem kicking me until I got a kidney bleed before, when he had no reason. Now he'd kill me, and he wouldn’t make it quick.
After a couple of seconds and a whispered conversation that I didn't catch, Jess and Wendy walked back in with Chelsea going hard at her formula bottle, safely strapped in her car seat.
The moment I saw her, every drop of evil that I'd known in the world seemed to fade. The moment she saw me, the bottle was quickly forgotten. She released a high pitched, happy sound and virtually jumped in my arms, so I went and hugged her as tight as I could.
"Oh, hello, bebita! Did you mis mo...Did you miss me, baby girl?" The word mommy almost slipped from my lips, and I honestly didn’t know how to feel. I was not her mother; this was a fact.
"Oh my God, this is so adorable. She missed you so much!" Wendy clapped her hands and came to hug us both. This was turning very fast into a cheesy situation, and I couldn’t say I reacted well to those. I was just not that type of person, and can you blame me? All I'd known for the past six years was violence and punishment.
We spent quite a few hours on the floor, playing with Chelsea and her noisy toys, enjoying her laughter until finally, she fell exhausted in my arms and went down for her nap.
"God, I missed a day like this. Just girls, sitting around on our asses, gossiping, eating junk and no pagers whatsoever. We are missing the wine, but I'm pretty sure everyone had enough to drink last night," Wendy said and looked at me and her wife with raised, accusatory eyebrows.
Yeah, we cleaned more than one bottle last night, but I was feeling so bad already, I didn't even feel the hangover.
