Daughter.
The word lands strangely in my chest. A few days ago, she was a stranger. Now she says it so easily, like I was always here.
Something tightens under my ribs. My own mother never called me that. Not once. She always treated me like a child she happened to have. Like an accident she carried and never chose.
I let out a slow breath and turn my gaze toward the window while Catherine talks to Lucas. The glass reflects nothing but my face, and all I can think about is how fast everything changes.
Funny how five minutes can steal everything you have, and give you something to hold on to.
I close my eyes.
My mind brings me back to 2014.
2014.
Earlier in the year, my mother gave birth to Sofia.
When she came home, she sank into herself. She slept through the days. Sofia cried in her crib until her voice went hoarse. Justin drank. When he picked her up, he shook her so hard that her cries turned sharp and panicked.
So I took her.
I did what I could. I learned how to hold her, how to rock her until her breathing slowed. I carried more than my body was built for. Still, she was never the burden. She kept my thoughts quiet. She gave me something to focus on.
We were never religious, but I convinced myself that I was still here because of Sofia. She needed someone. And maybe I needed her too.
She slept in my arms. So small. Her fingers curled around mine, holding tight. Her lips parted as she moved.
I sat in a chair by the window. From behind the nursery door, the shouting started again. My mother screamed, my stepfather shouted back, then her voice cut off. I knew what that meant. When she got silent, beatings came, which he called lessons she had to learn to be a good wife. He never even once wanted lessons on how to be a good husband.
Tears slid down my face. I didn’t wipe them away. Sometimes they didn’t come at all. Sometimes there was only numbness, settling deep inside me.
Catherine’s hand closes around my shoulder. Her warm touch pulls me back, scattering my thoughts. When she sits again, her voice is low.
“Are you okay?”
I nod. I stay still. Sofia is still on my mind.
I made a promise a long time ago. When I turn eighteen, I will try to find her. But every memory that crawls up from my past already knows the truth. I am not enough for her. I never was. How do you take care of something so small and so breakable when you can’t even hold yourself together?
She is two now. She wouldn’t even remember my face. She wouldn’t know my voice. I would just stand there, holding her like a stranger while something inside me splits open. And then I would leave again. Or she would be taken again. Either way, I would lose her twice. And I am not sure whether I would be able to survive it again.
People make selfish decisions. Sometimes those decisions are the only way to survive.
I want her close. I want to hold her again. But wanting doesn’t mean she would want me. That is the part of life I neverunderstand. How families break under tragedy. How the system steps in when everyone else is too damaged to stand. How it decides what is best and walks away, leaving us with the pieces.
They took her from my hands and said it was my fault.
Blamed me for the murder of my own mother and Justin.
I am guilty.
But not of murder.
I am guilty of opening the door and letting the murderer inside.
NINE
JUDAS
