Chapter 13 - Christmas Lights Without Him
It was December again and I realized it before anyone said anything because Daniel's apartment smelled like the little pine candle his neighbor had given him and the grocery store had those red bows on every shopping cart. I was sitting on his couch with my bunny in my lap and I hadn't needed to hold it tight for months, but that week I did again.
My therapist had asked me the session before if I remembered what month it had been in the kitchen. I said Christmas. She nodded and said sometimes our bodies remember before our minds do. I didn't like how that sounded, but my stomach had been tight every night anyway.
Daniel didn't make a big deal about it. He just said Mom had finished her parenting classes. He said that word carefully, like he wanted me to hear it right. She'd been going every Thursday to the same building where I saw my therapist, different floor, trauma-informed parenting with a group. She'd also been seeing her own counselor twice a week. He told me she'd asked if I could come for a daytime visit. Not sleepover. Just daytime, at the house.
I asked if the kitchen would be the same.
He said the marble island was still there but Mom had changed some other things. He said I could say no or yes or yes with him there. I said yes with him there. I kept my bunny against my chest the whole time I said it.
Mom opened the door before we knocked. Her hair was the same wavy brown but she wasn't wearing the red dress. She wore a soft gray sweater and jeans and the house didn't smell like Daddy's cologne at all. The Christmas tree was up in the living room but it was smaller, with white lights only, no big red ribbons like before. There were no photos of him on the side table where his picture used to be. She'd moved my little art table near the window and there were new curtains, light blue, that let more sun in.
"Hi, honey," she said, and her voice was quiet. She didn't reach for me right away. She waited.
That was something she'd learned, she told me later. Ask before you touch.
Daniel put his hand lightly on my shoulder. "We're just gonna hang for a bit," he said.
I walked past the entry and into the kitchen. The white marble island was exactly the same, cold to the touch, the same warm recessed lights overhead making everything soft. My throat got tight. I remembered the floor where Daniel had knelt to be at my eye level. Without thinking I went right to that spot, next to the island where he'd been, and I sat down on the floor with my back against the cabinet. I pulled my knees up and held my bunny tight.
Mom saw me do it and her eyes filled up but she didn't cry loud. She just knelt down a few feet away, not too close, and said, "Is that where you want to sit?"
I nodded. The floor was cleaner than I remembered. She'd gotten a new rug for the living room, but here the tile still had that same little crack near the dishwasher.
We didn't talk about the game. We just sat. She asked if I wanted hot chocolate and I said yes, and she made it in the microwave and brought it to me on the floor instead of making me come to the table. Daniel leaned against the island and didn't try to fix anything. He just breathed with us. After a while I scooted over and let Mom sit next to me, and she asked, "Can I sit here?" first, and I said yes. We drank our hot chocolate on the kitchen floor where it had happened, and for the first time the kitchen felt like it could be mine again too.
Three days after that visit, on a Tuesday, Daniel picked me up from school and his mouth was a straight line. He held out a small white envelope.
"This came to my mailbox," he said. "It's addressed to you. I didn't open it."
There was no return address, but I recognized the handwriting right away because Daddy used to write my name on my lunch bag in the same slant. SOPHIA with a big loop on the S. Inside was a birthday card even though my birthday wasn't for two months. It had a cartoon bunny on it that looked nothing like my bunny. Inside he'd written *Happy Birthday little bird. Daddy misses you so much. This is still our secret game. Don't forget. Love, Daddy* and a smiley face.
My hands went cold. I shoved the card back in the envelope like it would burn me.
Daniel didn't touch it after that except with a paper towel. He said, "He's not supposed to contact you at all. This is a no-contact violation."
He called my therapist first, then the sheriff's deputy who had done the welfare check, then the prosecutor. He let me sit on the couch with my bunny while he talked on the phone in the kitchen so I could hear every word and know he wasn't keeping secrets. I heard him say violation and added to charges and documentation, and I felt my heart beating in my ears but I also felt steadier because he was reporting it instead of hiding it.
My therapist saw me the next morning. She let me bring the card in a zip bag and we didn't open it. She said, "He tried to use the bunny and the nickname to pull you back in. What did you do?"
I said, "I gave it to Daniel."
She nodded slow. "That's exactly what safe and brave looks like," she said. "You and Daniel did the right thing. That card doesn't mean you have to talk to him or keep anything for him."
Later that week Mom came to Daniel's apartment for a meeting with the therapist. She had her certificate from the class folded in her purse. She said she'd painted the bedroom and taken Daddy's things to storage at her sister's house, not our house anymore. The therapist told us Mom had met all her goals so far and the caseworker agreed she was safe. She said the plan was graduated return — daytime visits first, then one sleepover at Mom's with Daniel on call, but no contact with Daddy at all, ever, until the court said otherwise.
Mom looked at me and said, "No matter what the judge says about your dad later, you don't have to see him if you don't want to. This is your home with me, without him."
May you like
I believed her that time because her hands weren't fidgeting and she didn't look at the door when she said it. She looked at me and at my bunny, and she waited for me to answer.
I said I wanted to try the sleepover in February. Daniel squeezed my shoulder, and I squeezed my bunny back, not because I was scared, but because I wanted to keep holding it.
