The drive home was quiet, the kind of silence that left too much room for thinking.
I kept seeing Ava’s small wave, the pink-shoed girl beside her, the flash of a rainbow tutu across the parking lot. Those tiny, bright pieces of a world that didn’t feel so heavy.
If Ethan had been here, he would’ve known exactly what to say.
He’d always been good at that, finding the thread of light when I could only see the mess. He would’ve cracked a joke about our daughter joining the “Breakfast Rebellion,” or reminded me that not every battle had to be won to be progress.
I could almost hear him now, his easy voice cutting through the static in my head.She’s okay, El. You’re doing great.
But the passenger seat stayed empty.
And my heart still hurt.
When I pulled into the driveway, I sat there for a long minute with the engine idling, staring at the house. The same white shutters. The same perfect flower beds. It looked harmless from the outside, peaceful, even, but I could already feel the tension waiting for me behind those walls.
For a second, I thought about Belle, how she’d smiled from the track, how powerful she’d looked, how easy it seemed for her to exist in her own skin. I wondered what she was doing right now. Probably laughing. Moving. Living.
The thought steadied me somehow.
I turned off the car and grabbed my bag. The air outside smelled like rain, heavy and cool. I took one last deep breath and squared my shoulders.
My mother was waiting for me. Of course, she was.
Time to go face her.
My mother was in the kitchen when I came in, wiping down a counter that didn’t need wiping. The smell of bleach hit me first, sharp enough to sting my nose.
“Back already?” she asked, without looking up.
“It’s ten-thirty,” I said. “Where would I be?”
She gave a thin smile. “I suppose I thought you might have errands.”
“Nope.”
“Well, I think we need to sit down and talk about how things should go in this house. If we are going to make this work, we need to be on the same page about Ava.”
I swallowed a sigh. “Mom, can you just let her be? She’s been through a lot.”
She finally set down the cloth and turned to face me. “Eleanor, I’m trying to help. You let that child run the house. You let her dictate what she eats, what she wears, who she talks to?—”
“Mom,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “That’s notdictating. That’ssurviving.”
“She’smanipulatingyou,” she countered. “All children test boundaries. If you don’t set firm ones, she’ll never learn how to function in the real world.”
I laughed, a short, humorless sound. “You mean your world. Where quiet equals good and different equals broken.”
Her mouth tightened. “Don’t twist my words.”
“I don’t have to,” I said softly. “You do that just fine on your own.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator and my heartbeat in my ears.
“She’s struggling, Eleanor,” my mother said finally, her voice trembling just a little. “And I’m scared. I don’t know how to help her. You act like you have all the answers, but you’re barely holding it together.”
The words hit hard because they were true. But not the way she meant.
“Iamscared,” I admitted. “Every day. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. But I know this—Ava doesn’t need to be fixed. She needs to be loved as she is.”
