Page 15 of Skin Deep

And waited.

And waited.

I spent the afternoon alternating between taking the girls to the bathroom and watching the minutes tick by, worrying about what the doctors would say when they saw Charlie’s cleft wasn’t all that serious. Places like Best Face Forward only had so much funding, so they probably had to prioritize their patients, treating the most serious cases first. Her case might seem minor, but when I took her to the dentist last time, they’d told me it was affecting how her teeth came in and that she might have to have additional jaw surgeries to correct them. Plus, I worried what would happen when she went to school. Kids could be cruel, especially about differences.

Mostly, I felt awful because I knew she’d inherited that from me. I reached up to touch the faded scar over my lip, wishing she’d gotten more of her mama’s beauty instead of my big nose and cleft lip. Not that Charlie wasn’t beautiful. Both my girls were gorgeous as far as I was concerned. It was other people who couldn’t see it.

Before the attack, Maya was a goddess, my beauty queen, and she had the sash and tiara to prove it. She’d glowed with life and hope every single day. Even when I was locked up, she was my light, always smiling, always finding the silver lining in the darkest cloud.

The night it happened, I’d decided to take Lettie out on a late night shopping trip. Maya was eight months pregnant with Charlie and she was craving vanilla ice cream and pickles. I couldn’t say no to anything my goddess wanted, so I kissed her goodbye and went.

The ripper broke in, tied her to a chair, spent almost twenty minutes cutting up her face, and then he left her there.

She survived—thank God—but the stress of the situation sent her into an early labor. The recovery was rough, and the stress of having our baby girl in NICU with complications from being a preemie didn’t help. We couldn’t hold her, and Maya couldn’t feed her. I don’t know if that’s why they didn’t bond, or if she had some postpartum depression, or if it was the stress of her own recovery. All I knew was that those were the worst six weeks of my life.

Even once she was released from the hospital, Maya was never the same. She’d spend hours at a time staring at her reflection in silence or touching her scars. I never cared, because she was always beautiful to me, but Maya had been a literal beauty queen who was getting into modeling. Maybe the ripper hadn’t killed her that night, but he’d done something so much worse; he’d destroyed her soul with those scars.

Maya spent the next two months dying in slow motion from the inside out. She withdrew. Stopped going out. I thought she’d bounce back eventually, but it never happened. No matter what I tried, she never got better. Maya stopped eating, stopped showering, stopped talking. It got to the point where I worried about leaving the girls with her to go to work, but what choice did I have? One of us had to hold down a job, and she was recovering from giving birth and her attack. I couldn’t be there all the time, even though I wanted to be.

I’m sorry, baby, I thought, closing my eyes and resting the back of my head against the wall.I should’ve been there for you.

“Charlotte Cooper?”

I jumped to my feet, collecting the girls when the nurse called Charlie’s name.

The nurse took Charlie’s weight and height, and then showed us to an exam room where she did the rest of the vitals and we had to wait. I sat with Charlie on the worn exam table and started reading to her from a pop-up book about baby animals. She pointed out the ones she knew excitedly and babbled through sounds similar to their actual names. She could only say puppy though.

We’d just finished reading the last kid’s book in the room when there was a solid knock on the door and it jerked open. My heart stopped when I sawWarrickwalk in.

Holy shit. What were the chances?

He made it two steps before he froze in place, looking at me like he didn’t think I was real. He frowned, lifted the clipboard in his hand, double checking some information. “Charlotte?”

“That’s me,” I said and then quickly corrected. “Us. Her. My daughter.”

His face went blank, and his eyes darted immediately to my left hand to check for a ring. I still had my wedding ring, but it was on a chain around my neck now, resting over my heart instead of on my finger.

“I’m not married,” I said, drawing a weird look from Lettie.

Warrick pressed his lips together in a pouty way that was way sexier than he had any right to be. “Riiight. So.” He glanced back at the door, probably considering bolting. “I’m Doctor Laskin.” He sighed and came in, closing the door behind him, going to wash his hands.

Laskin. So, that was his last name. Warrick Laskin. It suited him.

He sat on the stool, pointedly ignoring us while he clicked through some things on the laptop. “I don’t see any family history from the mother’s side in here.”

My throat was suddenly tight. “I…She…”

“Our mom is dead,” Lettie supplied.

War’s fingers stopped moving over the laptop keyboard. He looked over at us with a frown. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Lettie shrugged and looked away, arms crossed.

War turned to me. “I wouldn’t ask, except it might be relevant. How did she…?”

“The stupid ripper killed her,” Lettie said roughly.

I winced at the way she said it. Lettie had a lot of strong feelings and trauma she was still working through from that day, mostly with a counselor through the school. I’d tried to talk to her, but she didn’t want to talk to her dad about it. All I could do was be there for her when she was having nightmares. At least those had decreased in frequency over time. Maybe they’d disappear completely one day.

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