“It’s me, Mochi,” I tried again.
He slowed, pausing to look at me.
“Monsters,” he said once more, robotic and unsure.
“I know,” I murmured. “But I’m not a monster, Mochi. I’m Mommy.”
The second I said it, doubt cracked through me like a hairline fracture. Was that even true? What if I was the monster who hurt dogs? The reason they wanted to leave and sent Tara away.
“I’m not a monster,” I repeated, my hand still stretched out toward him. Then I pulled it back slightly. My fingers curled. I felt like a liar.
“Or am I?” My voice barely came out. My eyes searched Mochi’s. “Am I the monster, Mochi? Did I hurt Rascal?”
He stared at me, head tilted.
It hurt. Because in that moment, I truly didn’t know what his silence meant. Animals sensed things. They just knew.
But then, like a beam of sunlight cracking through clouds, Mochi launched off the shelf and landed gently on my hand.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you.”
He was just a bird, sure, and maybe he loved me anyway, even if I was a monster. Maybe he loved me the way animals did, without conditions, without questions. Always forgiving.
But for a moment, I felt like the old Emily again.
“Let’s go, Mochi.”
I set him gently on my shoulder and headed upstairs toward the bedroom. My feet felt heavy, but I knew what I had to do.
It was time.
Time to find out who I really was.
And the only people I knew who could help me weren’t anywhere near the Breakers.
They were hundreds of miles away, in Florida, where they’d moved after my dad had inherited a trailer from a distant, childless aunt.
Before I realized it, I was sitting on my bed, the door shut and locked: a Daniel-free zone.
Mochi flew into his cage on his own, fluttering to the little mirror and pecking at the seed-stick like nothing had happened.
I held the phone in my hand. The number was one I’d memorized years ago. I’d almost dialed it a hundred times. A thousand.
But this time, I pressed call and put it on speaker.
The phone rang.
“Hello?” my mother answered, her voice raspy with the smoker’s cough I remembered from childhood.
“Hello?” she asked again.
Another moment passed. It stretched and wavered. I could still back out.
“Emily. It’s you, isn’t it?”
Another cough.
“Yes, Mom,” I finally said before she could hang up. “It’s me.”
