Annabelle shook her head, still sobbing. “No. If you had, you would have come back. You wouldn’t have broken your promise.”
I didn’t argue with her. There was no use right then when she was so distraught, and I didn’t have the emotional strength to go down the road of what I’d been feeling back then—what I still felt now. All my energy was focused on Annabelle and how she was falling apart in my arms.
A soft hand touched my arm and I lifted my head just enough to see Mieke standing beside us. She had one hand on my arm, but the other was rubbing her sobbing mother’s back. “Please don’t cry, Mom.” Annabelle’s sobs abruptly stopped but turned into little hiccups that tortured me just as bad as her sobs had. “And don’t take your pain out on Dad. If he’d known, he would have been there with you.”
Hearing her defend me like that to her mother shamed me. I didn’t deserve her taking up for me like that. I’d left her mother and, in my refusal to face my pain and self-hate, I’d essentially left Mieke as well. I’d failed them both. I deserved everything Annabelle threw at me and so much more.
Eventually Annabelle cried herself to sleep, her arms still wrapped around my neck. I lifted my eyes from the beautiful girl, who had turned into an even more exquisite woman, to meet my daughter’s tired gaze.
Mieke gave me a sad smile. “She always does this when she remembers…” She broke off and shrugged. “I guess it exhausts her.”
I brushed my lips over Annabelle’s forehead and stood with her in my arms. “Come on,” I told the girl. “You and your mom should get some sleep.”
I carried Annabelle down the hall to my bedroom and laid her in the middle of the king-sized bed. Pulling the covers over her, I glanced at Mieke who was standing on the other side of the bed. “You two take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
I had another bedroom, but I’d turned it into my music room. It had my keyboard and guitars in it. I’d fix that in the morning, I promised myself. I wanted Annabelle and Mieke to stay with me for as long as they were going to be in California. I didn’t want to waste another second away from them.
Mieke lifted her green and gold gaze from her mother, startling me yet again with their unique blend of the two colors. Her eyes couldn’t be labeled as hazel; there was too much green. The gold was just enough to catch your attention and hold it. “Would you… Will you lie with us for a little while? I’m tired, but I don’t think I could fall asleep right away.” I blinked, surprised by her softly spoken question, and she bit her bottom lip. “Please? Just for a little while?”
Giving her a nod, I climbed in on the right side of the bed beside Annabelle. Instinctively, I wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against my chest. She let out a soft, shuddery breath and burrowed against me as if she was desperate to get closer in her sleep.
Mieke kicked off her shoes and turned off the light as she climbed into bed on the other side of her mother. With the door still open, I could see her worried face as she watched me holding her mother so close. “She acts so strong that sometimes I forget how vulnerable she really is.” Mieke stroked a hand down Annabelle’s arm, seeming so much older than she really was.
We lay like that for several long minutes, both of us quiet as we watched Annabelle sleep. My gut was churning, my mind racing from what Mieke had told me earlier. Maybe I hadn’t been there to feel the fear when my daughter had been taken, but I felt it right then. Annabelle must have lost her mind…
“How did they find you?” I couldn’t help but ask, my mind stumbling over all the things that could have happened to my little girl when she’d been snatched.
The hand that had been stroking up and down Annabelle’s arm lifted to her mother’s hair, combing her fingers over the hot-pink strands. “Mrs. Viars didn’t hurt me, Dad. So don’t torture yourself about that, okay?” She continued to stroke Annabelle’s hair, as if she needed to soothe her mother even though she was sleeping. “She took me to her home and fed me mac and cheese, played Barbies with me. I was scared, but only for a little while. She was nice but distraught from the loss of her daughter. Later they told me that it was because I reminded her of her little girl that she took me. Her mind was protecting her from the pain of the recent loss, and seeing me confused her.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, relief washing through me as she told me about her time with this Mrs. Viars woman. “But how did they find you, sweetheart?” I needed to know or I knew I’d never get another second of sleep for the rest of my life.
Mieke smiled, as if knowing how badly I needed her answer. “Mrs. Viars’ sister came to check on her two days after she took me. When she saw me and realized I was the little girl the entire state was looking for, she called nine-one-one. She didn’t want the cops to scare me, or her sister to get hurt, so she told them to be gentle. A woman, a Fed I guess, knocked on the door a few minutes later and took custody of Mrs. Viars.” She shrugged. “I don’t remember a lot after that. It became kind of crazy. I remember a cop picking me up and wrapping a blanket around me because I was still in Mrs. Viars’ daughter’s nightgown and it was chilly outside. I remember being a little scared about all the strangers and the flashing lights of all the cop cars. One woman might have come into the house, but there were at least twenty cop cars outside.”
“Was…your mom there?”
“No. They wouldn’t let her come to the scene. The cop put me in the back of an ambulance and let me play with his badge on the ride to the hospital. He stayed with me while a doctor checked me over to make sure I wasn’t hurt. Someone brought her and Uncle Noah to the hospital.” I saw her chin tremble and lifted my arm from around Annabelle to pull her closer.
“Mom was a little hysterical at first, but when she saw me she tried to keep her calm. I remember her smiling even though she was crying pretty hard. She grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. She had never squeezed me that hard until that day. She had always been so careful when she hugged me up until then. Uncle Noah was crying too, and I thought that was crazy because I’d never seen him cry before. Seeing his tears scared me more than anything else had during that entire time.” She swallowed with difficulty and continued with a whisper. “It was only then that I realized something bad had happened. That what had happened to me had been something some little girls didn’t come back from.”
“Mieke…” I rasped out, tears burning my eyes. I didn’t try to hold them back. Letting them fall freely, I pulled her even closer, practically squishing Annabelle against my chest in my need to hold Mieke just as close.
Motherfucking hell. I should have been there. I should have been there to hold her and her mother. Maybe if I had, none of that would have happened. Mieke wouldn’t have been taken… And maybe Michelle would have been there too. A choked sob escaped me.
Annabelle sighed my name in her sleep and wrapped her arms around me. She pressed a kiss into my chest, and I felt it even through the cotton of my shirt. Mieke draped an arm over her mother, her hand on my back as she held me just as close as I held her. Together we sandwiched Annabelle between us, protecting her from the bad memories.
Mieke fell asleep a little while later. The sound of her even breaths mixed with her mother’s calmed me enough that I was able to relax, but it was hours later before I even began to feel like sleeping. I didn’t dare move, but watched with a new determination as my two girls slept.
I hadn’t been there for them when they had needed me the most, but that stopped now. I was done hiding from my past fuck-ups. That shit was over and it was time I moved on instead of hiding from them and Annabelle. None of it mattered now.
I had a daughter to get to know and try to make up for not being in her life until now. My gaze dropped to the sleeping beauty curled against me, holding on to me as desperately in sleep as I wanted to hold on to her forever. “I love you, Anna. I’m not going anywhere ever again,” I promised her. “Tomorrow our new lives start. I swear to you, baby. We’ll start the life we should have had all along.”