Page 86 of Sunshine
“Mmhm.”
Poppy turns her head a little, swiping at the water running down her face, and I tilt her chin back toward me. A single tear spills from the corner of her eye, joining the rivulets of water racing down her cheeks, and panic grips my heart.
“You don’t have to tell me—”
“No, it’s okay. I want to.”
She turns into me, slides her arms around my waist, and rests her head on my chest. The way her body sags against me, like she’s releasing tension that couldn’t be eased with sex or touch or conversation, leads me to tighten my hold on her as I reach around and turn off the taps, then guide her out of the shower.
Once she’s wrapped in a towel, I carry her to my bed still dripping with water and settle her against the pillows. Then I slide in beside her, not caring that my sheets are all wet, gathering her in my arms and tucking her head under my chin to cocoon her. Letting her know she’s safe with me.
“Those ones are…were…” Poppy drops her head against my shoulder. “The snowflakes are for my sisters.”
The jerk of my head is involuntary, and I force myself to calm as my heart races with a thousand questions. “Your sisters?”
“Three of them,” she admits in a voice so low I strain to hear her. “My dad’s girls. I… I only found out about them when I went looking for him the year before last. He has a whole other family and for a while there, I thought maybe…”
I stroke her damp hair, dreading the direction of this story but desperate to hear the end. The very idea of me ever hurting my daughter is impossible to accept, but Poppy already said her father is the man who broke her heart. “You thought maybe…what?”
“I thought maybe I’d found my place in the world,” she mumbles. “My family. My happily ever after.”
Poppy droops against my body, presses her lips to my skin, then sighs like she’s accepted heartache as a fact of life.
“Things started out okay,” she continues. “I showed up at his house out of nowhere and his wife opened the door. A wife I didn’t know he had. She wasn’t particularly welcoming, but my dad… He stood by me. Invited me into their home. Introduced me to the girls. Ella, Gemma, and Kaia. They were only five, nine, and eleven. Super cute. Funny. Smart. I fell in love with them. I even lived with them for a while. Drove the girls to school sometimes. Made dinner when Dad and Lauren were busy at work. And when I began to feel more like the hired help than the oldest daughter or the big sister, I didn’t say anything. What else was I supposed to do? This was myfamily.”
Poppy glances up at me, and there’s a spark of remembered joy in her eyes. “The girls had huge birthday parties that year. Big productions with friends and family and entertainment and food and decorations. No expense spared. And I know I’m not a kid, and I didn’t have any friends or family outside of Dad and Lauren and the girls, but the year I was living with them, Dad organized a dinner at a big fancy restaurant for my birthday. It was going to be the first time I’d ever celebrated with him and…” She chokes back a laugh that’s heavy with sadness. “It sounds so stupid now. I was excited about being the guest of honor at a table filled with people who loved me. I was excited about the food and the wine. I was excited about thecake.”
Dread rolls in my stomach like oil, and I pull her closer against me.
“I arrived fifteen minutes late—you know, to be fashionable—but I was the first one there, and when the host showed me to my table it was a tiny thing with two chairs. Just two. I ordered a glass of wine while I waited. For fifteen minutes. Then another fifteen. Then an hour.”
“But he did show up, right?”
The alternative is incomprehensible to me, but somehow, I’m not surprised when Poppy shakes her head.
“No. He never came. I left for Aster Springs the next day.”
A deep rumble sounds in my chest, and I swallow the shards in my throat as I lift Poppy into my lap, cradle her against me, and rain kisses over cheeks that are damp now with salty tears.
“Stay here tonight,” I say, and with a nod, Poppy releases a wave of fresh grief. I capture the flood of tears with my hands, my mouth, my body, then curl around her as she trembles with her quiet sobs.
Finally, with enough tender caresses and gentle kisses and soothing murmurs against her hair, Poppy finally falls asleep, but I’m so distressed for her, so dazed and so outraged, that I lay awake long after she closes her eyes.
I love her. I do. And I’ll do anything to heal her hurts. I’ll fight for her the way nobody has. I’ll fight for her the way she deserves.
“Stay here, Sunshine,” I whisper into the quiet room. “Stay here with me forever.”
twenty-six
Dylan
The years of worryand weariness I thought were forever baked into my bones leach out of me, seeping from my limp muscles into a mattress that has never felt this soft. It couldn’t. Not when I was missing Poppy by my side, curled up in my arms while her warmth enveloped me in return.
So I don’t know how, hours after we drift off to sleep, I end up sprawled out on the far side of the bed. But when I realize she’s not snuggled up against me anymore, I roll and stretch my arm out, searching for her.
When I discover she’s not in bed at all, I sit up and look around the dark room, blinking away the last tendrils of sleep. My bedroom door is open even though I know I left it closed. I wanted to make sure Izzy would have to knock on the off-chance she went wandering in the night.
My stomach sinks as I flop back onto my pillow, staring up at the dark ceiling. Poppy’s gone. She ran.
