“I know,” I said quietly. “Neither have I.”
Sunny stood then, padding over to me and pressing his head into my thigh with quiet insistence. I bent automatically, scratching behind his ears, grounding myself in the familiar weight of him, the steady presence that had been part of my life for so long.
“I didn’t tell him to come like that,” I said, needing them to understand. “I didn’t ask for helicopters or—” I huffed a breath. “Any of this.”
Daddy nodded. “I figured.”
“But I didn’t stop him either,” I admitted. “Because part of me needed him to be here.”
Momma reached for my hand, squeezing gently. “That doesn’t make you reckless.”
“No,” Cassie added. “It makes you real. Like the Velveteen Rabbit.”
The words landed softly, but they carried weight.
I’d read that book to them—curled up on the old sofa with Lily half-asleep against my shoulder and Cassie pretending she was too old to care even though she always inched closer. I’d read it slowly, carefully, lingering over the parts about becoming real through love and wear and heartbreak, even back then understanding something my child self didn’t have language for yet.
That being real wasn’t about perfection.
It was about risk.
About choosing connection even when it changed you.
Cassie must have remembered that, too, because she smiled at me in that knowing way that said she’d grown up hearing my voice tell her stories that mattered.
And suddenly, standing there with my family and a man who had already changed the shape of my heart, I understood the Velveteen Rabbit in a way I never had before.
You didn’t become real by staying untouched.
You became real by loving something enough to let it leave marks.
That did it.
Tears burned suddenly, sharp and unexpected. I blinked hard, then let them come, anyway. Because I was tired of holding everything together by sheer will. Because this was the place I’d learned I didn’t have to.
“I don’t know how to explain what’s happening,” I said, my voice breaking. “I just know I’m not the same person I was. And I don’t want to be.”
Momma pulled me back into her arms, rocking me slightly. “Honey,” she murmured, “you were never meant to stay the same.”
I laughed wetly. “You say that now.”
“I’ve always known it,” she said.
Daddy cleared his throat, his voice rougher than usual. “You remember when we brought you home?”
I stilled.
“You’ve told me.”
“You were so small,” Momma added softly. “So quiet. Like you were listening before you decided whether the world was safe.”
I smiled through tears. “Still doing that.”
Daddy chuckled. “We argued about your name.”
“You did?”
“Oh, yes,” Momma said. “Your daddy wanted something strong. Something traditional.”
