Page 36 of Anything for You
“Hey, Maddy,” I say softly. “My name is Emma.”
Chapter Fourteen
Emma
It’s still mostly dark when I open my eyes. I’m confused for a second before I realize why the window is on the wrong wall, why I’m looking up at it, and why my back feels like an elephant stomped on it.
I’m in Maddy’s room. On the floor.
After we left the office yesterday, I took her shopping for her favorite snacks. When I asked her what she wanted, she shrugged at me, eyes darting around like she was seeing a grocery store for the first time. We ended up wandering the snack aisles, me holding things up and her shrugging that tiny shoulder. I could see when she liked something though—the spark in her eyes gave her away—she was just nervous to tell me.
Anxious energy flowed from her all afternoon. At my office, through the grocery store, during the car ride home, while she helped me put away her snacks, and while I showed her my house. The only time it lessened was at the doorway to the room Jeremy and I set up for her. My eyes tear up all over again just thinking about it.
“This is…all mine?”
The hope in her tone and the waver in her voice cracked my heart clean in half.
“It’s yours, Maddy. I set it up just for you.”
“I’ve never had my own room before.”
It was the most words I’d heard her speak all afternoon, and my broken heart broke just a little more.
“You do now. Cindy told me you liked art and dogs, so I put art supplies in your desk for you to play with, and I got you the furriest dog stuffy I could find.”
Her hand snuck back to stroke the ear of the stuffy that was sticking out of her backpack, and I could tell by the gesture that it was her security blanket.
“Maybe he can be friends with the one you already have. Does he have a name?”
“It’s a girl,” she whispered, her eyes glued to the room. “Her name is Kate.”
“That’s a really good name.”
“She makes me feel safe.”
Maddy spent the afternoon drawing and writing in her little notebook and barely speaking unless she had to. At first, I stood in her room, not knowing what to do with myself. But when I saw the glances she kept darting my way, as if to make sure I was still there, I grabbed a book and settled in to read while she explored her desk. Without her saying a word, I knew she wanted the quiet and the company. That’s a combination of desires I deeply understand.
I made macaroni and cheese for dinner, which she silently picked at. When it was time to get ready for bed, I sat on her bed while she took a shower and brushed her teeth. She said she could do it herself, her independence showing me just how much she has had to do on her own, likely not able to rely on the adults in her life to help her much.
I vowed to change that. To turn her back into the kind of seven-year-old who needs an adult to tell her the shampoo is out of her hair and that she hasn’t brushed her teeth for longenough, and who protests bedtime instead of quietly getting under the covers with her book on her lap and a stuffed dog under each arm.
I asked her if she wanted me to read with her and she shook her head again, her eyes on the pages ofHarry Potter, lips moving while she sounded out the words. Ten minutes later she was asleep with the book on her chest. I closed it and put it on her nightstand, then tucked her in and sat on the edge of the bed.
As I looked at her, clad in pajamas covered in puppy dogs, her face more relaxed in sleep than I had seen it all day, a fierce protectiveness expanded in my chest. I wanted to wrap this little girl up in my arms and promise that nothing would ever hurt her again. I wanted to give her a home and a family and permanence in her life and her favorite snacks in the cabinet every single day. I didn’t know how long I would have with her, but I would give her as much of that as I could, every day she was with me.
Not wanting to leave her alone in case she woke up in the middle of the night, I made a bed on the floor of her room and slept there. And now I lay in the dim early morning light, my brain buzzing with all the different ways I can reach Maddy. Pull her out of her shell a little bit. Show her it’s okay to ask for things and need things and not want to be alone. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that she wanted to tell me what her favorite snacks were. She wanted me to keep her company and help her with her shower and read with her before bed. She just didn’t know how to ask.
I want to teach her how.
My body is exhausted from a night on the floor, but my brain is going a thousand miles a minute. I wonder idly if this is what parents perpetually feel like. No wonder every parent I know is so damn tired all the time.
The blankets rustle above me, and I sit up just in time to see Maddy do the same, her red hair a tangle around her face. She rubs her eyes and looks down at me.
“Did you sleep here?” she asks, her voice scratchy from sleep.
“Morning, Maddy. I did sleep here.”
“But why? You have a bed.”
