Chapter 10: The Sun She Drew
Lily started second grade in September.
She had a teacher named Mrs.
Calloway who wore her hair in a bun and kept a jar of colored pencils on her desk that students could borrow freely.
Lily came home the first week and told Marcus that Mrs.
Calloway had put one of her drawings on the classroom wall.
"Which one?" Marcus asked.
"The one with the sun," Lily said.
He smiled.
She had nightmares for a while — not every night, but enough.
Marcus had arranged sessions with a child therapist named Dr.
Amara Osei, who had an office with soft chairs and a sand tray and a way of listening that made Lily talk without realizing she was talking.
After the fourth session, Lily told Marcus on the drive home that she liked Dr.
Osei because "she doesn't act like the things I say are too big."
"They're not too big," Marcus said.
"I know," Lily said.
"That's why I like her."
Sandra was sentenced to four years.
With time served and standard reductions it would likely be less.
Marcus did not track the number closely.
His attorney would notify him of anything that required his attention.
He had changed the locks the night of the arrest.
He had repainted the living room a different color — Lily had chosen yellow — and they had moved the dining room chair back to the dining room where it belonged and bought a new one for the living room, a soft armchair in green that Lily immediately claimed as her reading spot.
The suction-dart gun had gone in the trash that same night.
One Saturday in October, Marcus was making pancakes when Lily came downstairs in her pajamas and sat at the kitchen counter.
"Dad," she said.
"Yeah."
"Do you think Grandma is sorry?"
He turned the pancake over.
He thought about the letter in the drawer.
The six sentences beginning with "I."
"I think she's sorry she got caught," he said carefully.
"I don't know yet if she's sorry for what she did to you.
Those are different things."
Lily considered this.
"Dr.
Osei says I don't have to forgive anyone until I'm ready.
And I don't have to be ready ever if I don't want to."
"Dr.
Osei is right."
"But she also says forgiveness isn't for the other person.
It's so the thing stops living in you."
Marcus set the pancake on a plate and slid it across the counter.
"What do you think about that?" he said.
Lily picked up her fork.
"I think I'm not ready yet," she said.
"But maybe someday."
He made his own pancake and sat down across from her.
Outside the kitchen window, the October light was coming in low and gold across the counter.
Lily was eating with the focused contentment of a child who is warm and fed and exactly where she is supposed to be.
Marcus looked at her.
He thought about the drawing she had made that first night — the two of them, no house behind them, no other figures, just the two of them and a sun.
He had taped it to the inside of his closet door where he saw it every morning.
He didn't need anything else in the frame.
They finished breakfast.
Lily carried her plate to the sink without being asked, rinsed it, and set it in the rack.
"Can we go to the park today?" she said.
"Yeah," he said.
"We can go to the park."
She smiled — the full, unguarded smile of a child who has been through something and come out the other side still capable of smiling like that — and ran upstairs to get dressed.
Marcus sat alone at the kitchen counter for one more minute.
He listened to her footsteps above him.
Running.
Light.
Certain.
He picked up his coffee cup and held it in both hands.
Outside, the sun was still coming in.
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Some people are supposed to protect us — and when they don't, the damage runs deeper than anyone can see from the outside.
But so does the healing, when it finally comes.
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Have you ever had to protect someone you love from the very people who should have been protecting them?
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