She didn't wave back. Just stared for a moment, then looked down at her hands.
Her parents are probably at the playground, I reasoned, glancing toward where families still lingered. A boy around her age was attempting the monkey bars while his father watched him. Two girls chased each other around the sandbox, shrieking with laughter. A woman sat on a nearby bench scrolling her phone while a stroller rocked beside her.
Plenty of kids. Plenty of parents. The girl was fine.
I turned away and fumbled with the small silver locket I always wore, the clasp cold under my fingers. It opened with a faint click. Inside, the photo was faded, colors bleeding at the edges, but the woman's smile was still achingly familiar. Auburn hair, my hair, falling in soft waves. Eyes that held light before life extinguished it.
My mother. Pamela Cross in her one good dress.
“How did I end up just like you?”The question was a silent weep. I'd promised myself stability. Security. Better choices. I'd clawed my way to a teaching degree, a savings account, a decent enough apartment, and a life that looked nothing like the chaos of my childhood.
But here I was. Unemployed. Penniless. Facing the street.
Mom had left for the grocery store when I was twelve and simply hadn't come back. Just a note on the kitchen table:"Be good, Claire. I need to find some air."She'd returned six months later, a broken ghost smelling of stale cigarettes and defeat.
And I, the desperate child, had spent seven years trying to fix her. Cooking meals she wouldn't eat. Reading library books aloud, keeping our shabby apartment spotless. All while a terrifying chant lived in my chest:If I am enough, she will stay. If I am perfect, she will love me.
She died when I was nineteen. A quiet, chemical end to a long sadness. And I was left with a deep belief that, at all times,love was a transaction. Something earned through usefulness. I feared, with the truest of convictions, that the moment you stopped being needed, you'd be thrown away.
A cold droplet hit my cheek. Then another on my hand.
"Perfect timing," I told the sky. "Really excellent work up there."
The sky, like Abraham Lincoln and my bird friends, did not respond.
I shoved the locket back under my sweater and stood as the drizzle became steady rain. The park emptied fast, parents scooping up kids, everyone scattering for cover. The toddler in the red jacket was finally surrendering to her mother, wailing about the unfairness of the weather.
I passed the little girl's bench on my way to the exit. She was still there. Sitting. The rain was beginning to darken the shoulders of her blue jacket.
I hesitated. My feet slowed.
Go check. Just ask if she's okay.
Not every child sitting alone is abandoned, Claire. You're projecting your own damage onto a random kid at the park.I chastised myself.
Surely one of these parents heading toward the parking lot was hers. Surely someone was coming for her.
I was soaked already, and exhausted, and drowning in my own disaster, so I tucked my head down and kept walking.
I didn't look back.
The walk home felt twice as long in the rain. My thin cardigan was soaked through by the time I stumbled into my apartment, which somehow felt smaller and more desolate than before. I peeled off the wet layers, changed into sweatpants and an old t-shirt, and was contemplating the profound emptiness of my cupboard when someone knocked at the door.
A gentle sound, it was almost a light tapping.
"Probably Mrs. Gable," I muttered, shuffling over. "Coming to share in the communal misery of our impending homelessness."
I opened the door. Already steadying my eyes to meet an adult-sized person, and yet, at that exact height, there was only cold air. I looked down and found her.
The little girl from the park stood on my worn welcome mat, utterly drenched. Rain plastered her dark braids to her head and streamed down a face that was far too pale. She was shivering violently, teeth chattering, a huge backpack strapped to her small frame like she was heading off to conquer Mount Everest instead of escaping from... what?
My heart stopped.
"Oh my god." I dropped to my knees, bringing myself to her level. "Sweetheart, how did you… Where are your parents?"
Her gray-blue eyes, fringed with wet lashes, filled with a misery that had nothing to do with the cold. Her lip trembled.
"Aunt Victoria said..." She stopped. Swallowed hard. "She said Daddy doesn't love me. That he wouldn't even care if I disappeared."
