Chapter 6
Christmas came a week later.
I’d almost forgotten.
Between the hearings, the meetings with Mark, the CPS visits, the girls’ therapy appointments, it had slipped my mind.
Sarah didn’t forget.
She strung lights all over the house.
Red and green and gold.
She put up the big Christmas tree Emily and I had bought the year before she died.
She bought a hundred ornaments.
My parents came over on Christmas Eve.
My mom cried when she saw the girls.
She held them both for so long I thought she’d never let go.
My dad took me aside in the kitchen.
He put his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m proud of you, son,” he said. “You did good. You saved those girls.”
I almost cried.
My dad almost never said things like that.
We baked sugar cookies that night.
The girls covered them in so many sprinkles you could barely see the cookie underneath.
Mia got frosting in her hair.
Lily laughed so hard she snort-laughed when Mia tried to lick the frosting off her own forehead.
I hadn’t heard Lily laugh like that in months.
It was the best sound I’d ever heard.
We opened one present each before bed, like we always did when Emily was alive.
Lily got the professional art set she’d been begging for since September.
The one with the fancy markers and the watercolors and the big sketchbook.
She screamed when she opened it.
Mia got a stuffed rabbit that sang “You Are My Sunshine” when you squeezed its paw.
She squeezed it over and over again, singing along off-key.
Later, after my parents left, after Sarah went to bed, I sat with the girls in front of the tree.
The lights twinkled.
The fire crackled in the fireplace.
Lily was quiet, twisting a strand of tinsel around her finger.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, bug?”
“Is Olivia ever going to come back?”
I knelt down in front of her.
I looked her right in the eye.
“Never. I promise you. As long as I am alive, no one will ever hurt you or Mia again. You are safe. You are loved. More than anything in the whole world. Nothing will ever change that.”
Lily threw her arms around my neck.
She cried.
Not sad tears.
Happy tears, I think.
Mia climbed into my lap, her rabbit tucked under her arm.
“Love you, Daddy,” she said, yawning.
“Love you too, baby. More than you’ll ever know.”
That night, we all slept in the big bed again.
The girls curled up on either side of me.
I lay there, listening to them breathe.
Emily’s favorite Christmas song was playing soft on the stereo downstairs.
I thought about what my dad had said.
You did good.
I didn’t know if I’d done good.
I’d failed them so many times before.
But I’d gotten them out.
I’d saved them.
That had to count for something.
I closed my eyes.
For the first time in a long time, I slept through the whole night.
No nightmares.
May you like
No worries.
Just peace.
