Head tilted, she pokes her tongue out between her lips as she focuses. “Ta-da!” she exclaims, gesturing down to the word.
“I’m giving you an A-plus for your handwriting, but I do see a mistake. Can you spot it before I tell you?”
Slouching, she pouts.
“Sweetie, don’t get upset. Everyone makes mistakes. I still do too.” Pointing to theC, I explain, “I know the wordseesounds like the letterC, but for the word, it needs to start with anS. Can we try again?”
“Oh, okay.” She hunches back over the table and scribbles the word with the proper spelling.
“Good job!”
High-fiving, we continue our lesson until midafternoon.
In her cute little pink ballerina dress with a tutu, Stella strains her neck to ask me from her booster seat, “Where are we going?”
“To your brother’s and Amelia’s concert, silly goose.”
She laughs at the endearment and resumes glancing out the window at the beautiful Parisian architecture.
It takes us about an hour to get to the venue, despite it being only a twenty-minute drive from the hotel.
“Oh no. I don’t want to go outside.” Stella’s voice is thick with unshed tears as paparazzi come into view.
As soon as our car pulls up, the flashes start, and men shove each other, fighting for a better shot.
As a grown woman, I don’t even want to encounter that myself. How am I going to reassure a little girl that she’s okay when pictures of her are going to be sold for money?
This life is filled with lies, greediness, and money-hungry people who are willing to do anything to double their bank account.
Gulping down my nerves, I hope Stella doesn’t see the hesitation in my eyes. “Jonathan is going to make sure we’resafe by protecting us, okay?” I say, unlocking her seat belt as her bottom lip trembles.
Once she’s perched on my hip, she winds her arms around my neck and cries into my skin. “He has big muscles, right?”
I chuckle. Levi would be livid to hear his little sister say anything about muscles.
“Giant muscles,” I reassure Stella.
Said strong man waits outside my door for my signal. I hold the back of Stella’s head to my neck so paparazzi don’t get shots of her face, signaling Jonathan through the window, he pulls the door open.
“No!” Stella wails, squeezing my waist tight with her legs.
“It’s okay, baby. I got you,” I whisper into her ear, hoping she can hear me over all the chaos.
Before I can take a step out of the car, Jonathan pushes my sunglasses down from the top of my head to my nose.
Oops, guess I’m still a beginner.
I exit the car carefully, not wanting to fall with Stella in my arms, and Jonathan places a hand on my back as he pushes his way through the crowd.
Their cameras click like guns, and voices are shouted at us from every direction. I flinch under the pressure. The paparazzi don’t care how our shoulders sag in defeat or how there’s a scared little girl.
The shot that will sell is what’s important to them.
“The world wants to know your name!”
“Are you just with him for money?”
“Do you do anything for a living?”
