Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

“How about I push you on the swing, instead?”

“Oh, yes, that’s a great idea. But you gotta do it high. I’m a bird, not a chicken.”

Lily and I both choked on shocked, consumed laughter.

Both of us on unsteady ground.

Tiptoeing around this meetin’.

My sister looked at me, took my hand where we watched Richard and Daisy play.

The child laughing and laughing.

Her joy filling the air as the day faded away.

“Sit with me?” Lily asked.

I gave her a nod, and we moved over to the back-porch steps that overlooked Daisy’s swing set.

Silence stretched on.

Strung up on the questions.

On the unsurety.

Finally, her voice cracked through the dense, suffocating air.

“I blamed him for so long, Violet. I knew deep down in my soul that he didn’t know. I could never erase his screams that night—when he’d pleaded for them to let me go. But I clung to the hatred for so long, desperate to keep him from you, fearing it would lead you to the same place as I’d been condemned.”

Misery stung the back of my throat, and a tear slipped from my eye.

I could feel her shift to look at me. “I’m sorry for that. For taking him from you. For putting that burden on his shoulders. I didn’t realize what I was doing at the time.”

“That’s not your fault. I just wish you would have relied on one of us. That you would have left with him that morning.”

She laughed out a wistful, sorrowful sound. “So many nights I’d lie awake and wish it, too. Knowing it was too late. That I couldn’t go back. Over those nights, I slowly forgave him, Violet, slowly realized he was just as much a victim that night as me. Used. Manipulated. He would have given anything for me. I see that now.”

I glanced at her. “I would have given anything, too.”

“You gave me exactly what I needed, Violet. Being the best momma that little girl could have. I knew you’d be. All the nights I spent dreaming of her. Loving her. Missing her. And the comfort I had was she had you. That you were her mommy.”

I gasped around the shards of glass lodged in my throat, and the words wrenched through my tears, “It’s been my absolute honor.”

We hadn’t talked about her and Daisy yet other than Lily asking a few things about her.

What she was like.

Her favorites.

Her fears.

I could see the longing swimming in her forlorn eyes.

I’d known it was coming.

Her head shook, and she bit down on her trembling bottom lip. “You know…I imagined what it might be like. When Richard found me, when he gave me a hope I’d long since stopped hoping for, when he’d promised he was going to get me out of there, I’d imagined coming back here, imagined what it would feel like to be her mother. To be reunited with this vacancy that has lived inside of me. But I know, Violet…I know looking at you two…hell, I knew from the second I saw you when David pulled you through that door. I knew that little girl was yours. Through and through. Wholly. And I would never steal that from you, and I would never steal that from her.”

“Lily.” It was a wheeze. A haggard breath of disbelief.

She squeezed my hand. “I mean it. This isn’t me taking the high road. This is me loving my child the best way that I can.”

“She knows she didn’t grow of me, Lily. Ever since she was a baby, I told her about my sister who loved her so much that she wanted to share her with me.”

I knew we’d have much more serious talks as she got older. But I’d needed Daisy to understand the love I was certain my sister had for her even though I didn’t know why she’d abandoned her.

Before I’d understood it’d been forced.

A tear streaked down her cheek. It glinted and glimmered in the last brilliant rays of the day.

“She’s our heart, Violet. And I won’t split her little heart in two. I’m going to be right here. Loving her as her aunt. As long as that’s okay with you?”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

Sniffling, she nodded. “I am.”

I looked at her through bleary eyes. “I missed you. Missed you so much.”

“I missed you, too.”

Lily grinned.

The tiniest flash of mischief in her eyes as she reached over and tugged at a lock of my hair.

“Hey,” I cried, laughing through the tears.

“Tell me you’re not still an old fuddy-duddy.”

“Fuddy-duddy? I’m pretty sure it’s you we need to be worried about.”

I grinned.

She smiled.

Soft and full of adoration. She sniffled and stood, looking at Richard who was pushing Daisy high. “She couldn’t ask for better parents.”

I gave her a fumbling nod of understanding.

She reached out. “Come on, no more crying. I’m ready to live.”

I let her help me to standing. I hugged her tight. Held on for dear life. “I can’t wait to see it.”