Page 58 of No Greater Love
bring about the cloud formation,
when there's water vapor in the air!"
Tasha burst out laughing, the sound bright and genuine. "Oh my God, that is one thousand percent Paige. Where did she even learn that?"
"I don't even know. Some educational TV show. She must have heard it once and decided it was her new favorite song. She'd sing it in the grocery store, in the car, during bath time. The other parents at the playground thought I was raising some kind of tiny meteorologist."
"That's so adorable," Tasha said, still chuckling. "I can picture her little serious face, belting out cloud formation facts."
"She was so proud of herself too. Like she was sharing the most important information in the world." I smiled at the memory. "One time, she?—"
I stopped. Tasha's laughter had shifted, becoming something else entirely. Her shoulders were shaking, but the sound coming from her throat wasn't amusement anymore. She was crying. Not the controlled tears of someone trying to hold it together, but deep, wrenching sobs that shook her entire body.
"Hey," I said softly, pulling her closer. "Hey, hey, hey. Sweetheart! What happened? What's wrong?"
"I can't," she gasped. "I can't stop seeing her face. This little girl, fifteen months old, and someone... someone hurt her, Nate. Someone she trusted. Someone her mother trusted."
My blood went cold. I didn't need details. I'd seen enough cases in the ER to know exactly what she was talking about.
"Oh, Tasha. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry you had to see that."
"She was so little. So innocent. And her mother..." Tasha's sobs intensified. "The sound she made when we told her. I've never heard anything like it. Like her whole world just ended."
I held her tighter, my own throat closing up. "Yeah. Yeah. I've been there, too." A pause. "Did they get the bastard that did it?"
"I don't know. The police were called. CPS took the baby." She looked up at me with red, swollen eyes. "How could someone do that? How could anyone look at a child and think..."
"I don't know, hon," I said honestly. "Some people are just broken in ways that can't be fixed."
"I keep thinking about you with Paige," she continued, her voice raw. "The way you protect her. The way you love her. And I can't understand how someone could take that trust, that innocence, and destroy it."
I thought about all the ways I tried to keep Paige safe. The careful vetting of babysitters. The self-defense classes I was already planning for when she got older. The way I still checked on her every night before I went to bed, just to make sure she was breathing.
"I grew up without that," Tasha said quietly. "My parents... they weren't monsters. They weren't abusive. But they were never really there, you know? My dad was always working. My mom thought emotions were inconvenient. I learned early not to need too much from anyone."
"Tasha—"
"But watching you with Paige, seeing how you are with her... it's like seeing something I never knew existed. This fierce, unconditional protection. This safety." Fresh tears started. "And today I saw what happens when that safety gets stolen. When someone destroys it."
I didn't know what to say. How do you comfort someone who's just witnessed one of humanity's worst failures? How do you restore faith in goodness when evil has shown its face so clearly?
"You saved her," I said finally. "That little girl? You saved her. You got her away from the person who was hurting her."
"But we were too late. The damage is already done."
"The physical damage, maybe. But you gave her a chance at healing. At safety. That matters, Tasha. That matters a lot more than you know."
She was quiet for a long moment, her breathing gradually evening out. "I think I'm falling in love with you," she said suddenly. "With both of you. And it terrifies me because I don't know how to trust that it's real. That it won't disappear."
My heart stopped. Not because of the confession—I'd been falling in love with her too, had been for weeks—but because of the raw vulnerability in her voice. The fear.
"It's real," I said softly. "Whatever this is between us, it's real."
"How do you know?"
"Because you're here. Because when your world got turned upside down today, you came to us. Because you held my daughter like she was precious. Because you're crying over a baby you'll never see again." I tilted her chin up so she could see my face. "Because I've spent eleven years building walls to keep people out, and somehow you've gotten past every single one."
She hugged me then, desperate and needy, and I poured everything I had into hugging her back. All my own fears about letting someone in. All my gratitude that she'd chosen us. All my determination to be the safe harbor she'd never had.
