Then she whispered — so quietly I almost missed it under the sound of the storm — “I need a dad before Friday.”
I felt the words land somewhere deep in my chest.
“If I don’t have one,” she continued, her voice cracking on every syllable, “they’re going to take me away from my mom.”
I stood there in my doorway, rain soaking my bare feet, completely and utterly frozen.
In all my years of keeping people at a careful distance — of building a life so small and controlled that nothing could get in to hurt me — nothing had prepared me for this. Not for the weight of her hand in mine. Not for the way she was looking at me like I was her last option.
Not for the way some locked-up part of me wanted, desperately, to be enough.
I didn’t say anything right away. I pulled her inside, grabbed a blanket off the couch, and was wrapping it around her shoulders when I heard footsteps splashing across the driveway.
Emily Parker burst through the rain like a woman running from a fire. She had an oversized raincoat thrown over her pajamas. Her face was white as chalk. She dropped to her knees in front of Lily, pulling her into a hug so tight I heard the breath leave the little girl’s body.
“Lily, baby, what are you doing? I told you to stay inside.”
Lily buried her face in her mother’s neck. But she didn’t let go of my fingers.
