Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

“I think he loves you a lot a lot.”

My spirit thrashed, and I met her gaze through the mirror, fiddling with an errant lock of her hair. “Why would you say that?”

“Because he looks at you that special way. Like when Papa looks at Nana.”

Old sadness pulsed. “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”

Except sayin’ it felt like a lie. The confessions he had left me with. The way he’d touched me. The way he’d looked at me in the very way that Daisy was talking about.

Like I was the stars in his sky.

Endless.

The light at the end of his forever that he had promised to me.

“I know so.” It wasn’t even an argument.

I shifted her around and knelt in front of her, pushing back the disaster of hair from her face, trying to frame it into words that she might understand. “I think he used to love me that way. Maybe it just makes him sad when he looks at me and remembers what that was like.”

“No, Mommy. I see it. Amor, amor, amor.” She sang it like a love song the way my daddy would.

My heart clutched. “You are the amor.” I barely managed to get it out around the emotion that warbled in my throat.

“We all got amor,” she told me, resolute. Her voice dropped to a secretive whisper when she said, “Mr. Richard, too.”

I pressed a kiss to her forehead because I couldn’t answer it or respond to it. There were too many questions that swirled and toiled and dug up the dirt on the grave that had been our marriage.

Ripping me to shreds.

Eddies of distrust and surges of the need to believe. The hope I’d always sworn I would cling to but was terrified I’d only be a fool to trust in now.

Terrified of letting myself go. Of giving in. Because if I lost him again…

My chest nearly caved at the thought.

I tipped up her chin, my sweet child looking up at me with all the faith in the world. Trusting me to give her the right answers when I couldn’t seem to come up with a proper answer for a single one.

“Every person deserves to be loved, Daisy. Every single one.”

But no one deserved to be destroyed the way he’d destroyed me.

“And sometimes people are so, so sad, and they need to be loved an extra little bit.”

God.

This child.

I touched her nose with mine. A soft caress. “Sometimes I think your heart is too big.”

She stared at me, our eyes connected, our souls one when we were together.

This child that hadn’t grown of my body but was one-hundred-percent mine.

“I just need it to grow big enough to be as big as yours, Mommy…then I’ll be perfect.”

I choked over the emotion lodged in my throat. “You are perfect.”

Before I fell apart right there, I gathered myself and pushed to standing. “Okay, let’s get that dress off so we can keep it clean for the ceremony.”

“Picture first.” There she was, right back to that.

She actually propped her hands on her hips.

How she went from the sweetest little thing in the world to cheeky in a second flat, I’d never know.

Exasperation blew between my lips. “Fine, sassy pants.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket and snapped a picture of her grinning like mad. Nothing but dimples and adorableness.

“Send it.”

I widened my eyes at her in feigned annoyance.

She giggled.

I tapped into my text thread with Emily and attached the picture with my message.

Me: Daisy wanted to say thank you for the shoes and let you know she’s ready to help with the wedding. If you could forward to your mom and Richard to say thank you, that would be great. Don’t worry, we’ll actually make sure her hair is brushed for the ceremony.I capped it with a winky face.

There. That was painless. The right thing to do. Richard would get his thanks, but it wouldn’t come directly from me, not that I had his number, anyway.

“Now scoot and get that dress off.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

She changed back into her regular clothes and then at the first intonation of my daddy singing in the kitchen, she went racing downstairs to help him with dinner.

Soft sorrow filled my smile when she disappeared, this overwhelming mix of love and grief and dread.

I fought it.

But I could feel myself coming up to a ledge.

A steep cliff that was eroding.

This trembling sense that everything was gonna shift and change.

I followed her out of her room only to pop my head into my mama’s. She was asleep, dragging in deep, uneven breaths. I eased in as silent as I could, pressed a lingering kiss to her cheek, and brushed back the sticky, damp hair clinging to her forehead.

That grief tried to become a stronghold. To fully take me over.

I forced it down and left as quietly as I’d come, heading downstairs. My phone buzzed in my pocket.