I lifted my head, forcing my face calm. “They leaving. We good.”
“Very good,” he said, but his eyes lingered on me a second too long. For the second time today, he pretended he didn’t know I was lying. “I think I might, in any case. One can never be too careful.”
Max looked up at me and whined softly. I walked with him to the foyer table and picked up my phone like it weighed twenty pounds. My email was still open from earlier, the big firm’s name right there in my inbox.
You have options, my primary attorney had written two months ago when the mayor first started pushing about the trees.You have resources. Don’t let small-town pressure dictate your choices. That had been about pine trees and liability clauses, not about a nine-year-old with my ex-boyfriend’s middle name stitched into hers. I closed out of the email just as a text message from Taniyah flashed across the top of the screen
Taniyah:
ky, please just let me see you.
In that moment I wanted to, so bad. I missed her, could use a friend right now. But I didn’t want to make a mistake. I set the phone face down.
On the outside, I was still the woman who could say “my lawyers” and mean people with offices in New York, LA, and London. But having access to the best in the business didn’t reassure me when I feared for my daughter… forme. Inside, my mind kept racing back through everything Zahara had said on my porch.Paternity. Custody. DNA. Withheld the existence of his child. A judge wouldn’t care that I’d been eighteen, hurtand humiliated, with parents who had lost their minds a little. I’d spent my entire pregnancy trying to disappear inside a house that never felt like home. I’d watched my belly grow and told myself over and over that if I kept him out, I could keep myself and my baby safe. But no judge would see that. A judge would see a woman with resources and choices who chose to shut a father out.
I pressed my palm to my stomach, like I could hold myself together like that. “You fine, You not gon’ lose her. You not,” I whispered to myself.
“Ms. Kyleigh?”
I jumped. Mr. Benton was closer now, hands still folded around that tray. “Serena texted to say they are ten minutes away. Shall I prepare hot cocoa?”
I latched onto that like a lifeline. “Yes, please. With the little marshmallows Zi likes.”
He inclined his head, disappeared toward the kitchen. I walked to the glass doors at the back of the house, looking down the hill. Emancipation glowed, a scatter of red, green, and warm white. Why couldn’t they realize how magical the town looked with or without the Grindley pines?
Headlights cut up the long driveway. I exhaled as Serena’s SUV came into view, waiting to see the little cartoon reindeer magnet still on the back from one of Aziza’s school projects. My baby loved reindeer. By the time I opened the front door, Serena was already out, pulling her knit hat off and shaking her curls free. Aziza ran past her, boots thumping, eyes bright.
“Mama!” she squealed, launching herself at me. “Mama, you shoulda came! It was so pretty, oh my God!”
I crouched to catch her, all the breath knocked out of me at once. “I know, baby girl. Did you have fun?”
She smelled like cold air and sugar and cheap hot chocolate. She was just so beautifully, vibrantly alive that you couldn’tresist adoring her. Max must’ve felt the same; he tried to kiss her face, but I swatted him. I didnotplay that, and he knew it.
“Yes! They had fake snow, but it felt real. And lights were everywhere. And music. And the train! Ms. Serena let me sit by the window and I waved at everybody and—” Her words tumbled over each other so fast she ran out of breath. She stopped and squinted up at me. “You okay, Mama?”
I realized my arms were still locked tightly around her, like I expectedhimto appear and snatch her away right here in the foyer. I loosened my grip, smoothed her puffs.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Tell me more about the train.”
Serena watched us quietly, keys in hand, eyes taking in more than I wanted her to. She quirked an eyebrow. I shook my head real fast.
“We brought you something. Well, technically Aziza bullied the vendor and I paid,” she said, stepping forward.
Aziza shimmied out of my arms and dug in the tote bag slung over Serena’s shoulder. She pulled out a plastic snow globe with a tiny fake town inside it, silver glitter swirling around it when she shook it.
“It look like down the hill. See? Little lights. Little people. I picked it for you, so you can have Christmas without no tree,” she said proudly, thrusting it at me.
The lump in my throat nearly choked me. “Thank you. It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
Serena tugged Aziza’s hat off, fingertips brushing her curls. “We ate at a little taco truck. She knocked back two and a half like a grown man.”
“I was hungry! We did a lot of walking,” Aziza protested.
Serena smiled, then looked at me more closely. “You okay? You look… I don’t know. Like you seen a ghost you don’t like.”
“I’m fine,” I said again. “Town business.”
Both of their faces wrinkled in matching suspicious frowns.
