Sadie, barely toddling, reaching for her mother’s leg, and Marissa stepping back. That little jolt in Sadie’s tiny shoulders. The earliest version ofoh.
Something I love doesn’t want me.
I shake the memory off, throat tight.
Micah steps forward now, brave as ever.
“She was first,” he declares quietly.
And then Eli turns to Sadie.
His mouth moves.
I can’t hear the words, but I see the joy draining out of her face. Eyes drop. Lips press together in that tight, fight-the-tears way.
My whole gut twists.
I start walking without realizing it.
Fast.
Weaving through parents and strollers, heat building behind my ribs.
Just in time to hear Eli say…
“You don’t have a mom, so you don’t get first turn.”
Everything in me goes still.
Sadie’s chin trembles.
“Stop it. Sadie has her dad, and that’s special too,” Micah insists.
Eli snorts. “No, it’s not. It’s weird.”
That’s it, the thing that hits bone.
Because I know exactly where that wound lives in Sadie, deep, tender, shaped like the outline of a woman who walked away.
Marissa left when Sadie was barely two, promising to “figure herself out” and come back.
She didn’t.
Every time something small touches that bruise, a kid on the playground, a Mother’s Day craft, a conversation she overhears, Sadie goes still.
Quiet.
Holding pain.
And now this.
“Sadie.”
She turns immediately, eyes big and shiny, but fighting so hard to be brave.
“It’s okay,” she whispers. “I’m okay.”
She’s not.
