“I hate it when you say that,” I whine, pressing my face against his chest. “Can’t you say bathroom like a normal person?”
“Why would I use such a grown-up word for such a Little girl?”
Before I can protest, again, that I’mnota Little girl, I’m airborne. Daddy carries me to the nursery, where he lays me out on the changing table and wraps a diaper around me.
“All right, bug. Use your diaper and then we can go downstairs and see what Uncle Eli made for lunch.”
“I don’twannause my diaper! Please, Daddy, can’t I use the bathroom like a big girl?”
Daddy sighs and a moment later there’s pressure on my stomach and tears sting my eyes as my bladder gives way to his touch.
“You’ll get used to it soon, bug,” he says quietly as he strips the soiled diaper from me and replaces it with a fresh one. “I know it’s hard now, but it won’t always be this way.”
“I don’t want to get used to it. I want to use the bathroom like a normal person!”
Hoisting me up into his arms, he carries me back to his bedroom to dress me once more in one of his oversized shirts and fluffy socks. “Josie, arguing with me about using your diaper isn’t going to make it any easier. The sooner you accept that this is how you potty now, the better it will be for you.”
“You mean foryou,” I mumble, earning me a deep sigh.
“That too, yes. But do you really want to constantly fight with me?”
It surprises me that my answer isn’t instantly “Yes”. That some part of me reallydoesn’twant to be fighting with him all the time.
But admitting that feels too much like admitting defeat, so instead I just keep my mouth shut as he carries me downstairs to the kitchen.
Lanie’s there, snuggled up against her Daddy and looking particularly pitiful as Axel bounces her in his arms in front of the open fridge. “There’s leftover fried chicken from the other night,” he says, a sweet, cajoling note to his voice I don’t think I’ve ever heard before. “You love Uncle Eli’s fried chicken.”
“No Idon’t. It’sgross.”
Sighing, Axel closes the refrigerator door. “Lanie, baby, you need to eat something. If you don’t choose soon, Daddy will choose for you.”
“I’m not hungry!”
Axel turns, freezing in place when he spots us. The Little girl in his arms lifts her head, and for the first time since I woke up in this prison of a house, her expression isn’t bright and happy and welcoming.
“What’sshedoing here?”
Guilt pricks at my chest. I can’t blame her for being mad at me. I’d be pissed too if I got spanked for something I didn’t even do.
“I’m sorry, Lanie!” The apology bursts out of me and tears of remorse blur my vision. “If I’d known you’d get in trouble too, I never would have snuck out of the nursery. Please forgive me?”
Sniffling, Lanie regards me through red-rimmed eyes. “You promise you won’t do it again?”
“I promise.”
She holds out a fist with her little finger stuck up in the air. “Pinkie-swear?”
Reaching my own littlest finger out, I hook it with hers. “Pinkie-swear.”
With a somber nod, she shakes our joined hands up and down. “You can’t ever break a pinkie-swear or you’ll die.”
“Melanie,” Axel scolds with a sigh.
“What? It’s the truth!”
“It is the truth, Adr—Uncle Axel,” I confirm with a solemn nod of my own. “I knew a girl who broke a pinkie-swear once and she got hit by a bus the very next day.”
Lanie’s eyes light with triumph. “See, Daddy? I told you!”
