Her blue eyes blinked open, and she grinned when she saw me kneeling at her side. She hustled to sit up, pushing the mass of bed-head out of her face with both hands, way too much excitement for after midnight. “Are you still the prettiest princess ever?”
The child pulled the softest laugh out of me, her awed sweetness my own inspiration. I brushed my fingers down the side of her face, that spot inside blazing so bright I didn’t know how it wasn’t lighting up the entire room.
She’d insisted her momma was an actual princess when I’d been getting ready, the child’s mind so full of fanciful things that I wondered if I didn’t feed too many of them into her ears.
But I loved that she looked on the world as if each second held a new wonder. A new promise and a new hope and a new adventure to hold. That was what I told her when she’d wanted to know where I was going . . . on an adventure to a ballroom dance.
She’d asked if I was going to meet Prince Charming.
Not even close.
“No, Mal Pal, I’m just regular old Momma.”
The tattered dress I’d tossed into the garbage and my throbbing knee were proof of that.
“Did you dance like a ballerina? I bet you were the prettiest princess there. I know it. Grams said you were gettin’ ready to knock some boys off their feet. Did you do some knockin’?”
A spurt of laughter almost made its way out. I bit it back.
“I think Grams was telling you stories.”
Her eyes lit up. “Storytime is my favorite,” she said in her sweet way, a little drawl and a lot overemphasized and sprinkled with a dash of sass. As if every word was of the upmost importance.
“Grams read two whole stories, and I read one, but it was really hard, and Thomas said I didn’t know half the words. I think he was way wrong. I think I got more like . . . two-thirds. Two-thirds is good, right?”
I swore, the little thing slayed me. So danged adorable, the child larger than life, always so excited to take on the world and make it hers.
“Two-thirds is great,” I promised.
“Next time, I’ll get a hundred.”
From the side, I felt movement. I should have known when I’d sneaked in that I’d end up waking the whole room. But there was my Thomas, looking rumpled and tired as he slowly sat up at the edge of his bed.
My big man.
My sweet man.
He rubbed a fist in his eye. “You’re home safe?”
He was also my worrying man.
My little protector.
The oldest of my children and the only one who had an inkling about the severity of our situation. That things were bad and there was a chance they could get worse.
We were riding on a hope and a prayer and fighting with every single thing we had.
My babies could be taken from me, and there was nothing in this world that was worse than that.
“Yeah, I’m home, Sweet T.”
“Did you find someone to help us?” he asked, strain in the heavy bob of his little throat.
Slowly, I pushed up to my feet and crossed the room so I could kneel in front of him. I set my hand on his face. The gentlest kind of reassurance. “Not yet, Thomas, but I will. I promise that I will.”
“It’s okay, Tom Tom. Momma knows all the tricks, don’t you, Momma?” Mallory slid off her bed and dug around under it before she pulled out a big drawing notepad, the pages a textured beige and bound in a thick brown stock. “See!”
She pointed at the pictures we’d drawn.
It had been the only way I’d been able to explain to her a little of what we were going through without instilling her with fear, a happily ever after waiting at the end the only comfort I could give her.
The last thing I wanted was to cut down the vitality that oozed from her like a spring gushing up from the earth.
“Tell us another one?” my five-year-old asked with way too much enthusiasm for the middle of the night. “Oh, please, Momma. You didn’t tell one before you left. You owe us.”
She grinned.
Way too big.
All little teeth with a single one missing in the middle.
I swore the child could melt a glacier.
I glanced at Thomas who was still wearing worry all over his expression. I wished I could take it from him, the terror he’d felt when I’d woken him in the middle of the night four months ago and whisked him and the girls away in the darkness.
Wished I could cover it and conceal it.
Or more importantly, make it completely go away.
Instead, I stood and stretched my hand out for him. “What do you say?”
He nodded, accepted my hand, and took a seat next to me on the floor by Mallory’s bed.