Chapter 5
A year after the fall, Lily celebrated her first birthday in my apartment.
Pink balloons were taped crookedly to the wall.
Megan brought a cake.
Daniel brought a stuffed elephant.
Lily still had some weakness on her left side and attended physical therapy twice a week, but she could sit without support.
She could laugh.
She recognized my voice from another room.
And when Daniel placed the stuffed elephant in front of her, she grabbed its ear and smiled.
He looked at me.
“She’s strong.”
“She is.”
He hesitated.
“So are you.”
I did not answer.
Some things did not need to become sentimental.
Daniel and I eventually divorced.
Not because he was a monster.
He wasn’t.
But I had learned that love without courage could become dangerous.
We shared custody under an agreement requiring that Patricia have no contact with Lily unless a court later decided otherwise.
Daniel never challenged that condition.
Three years later, Lily ran across a playground in Cincinnati while I watched from a bench.
Her left leg still turned inward slightly when she became tired.
Most strangers never noticed.
I always did.
She climbed the slide steps and shouted,
“Mommy! Watch!”
“I’m watching!”
She flew down laughing.
For years, that midnight moment returned whenever I closed my eyes.
The slap.
The fall.
The silence.
But memory changed with time.
It stopped ending on the hospital floor.
Now, when I remembered Lily lying motionless beneath the harsh emergency-room lights, another image came afterward.
A little girl running through sunlight.
Alive.
Loud.
Impossible to silence.
Every time she laughed, I remembered Patricia’s command that night.
Shut her up.
I watched Lily race toward the slide again.
Then she screamed with joy so loudly that three parents turned to look.
I smiled.
May you like
“Go ahead, baby,” I whispered.
“Make all the noise you want.”
