“Not here.” His jaw was tight enough that I could see the muscle working beneath his skin.
“Brad.” My own voice came out smaller than I meant it to. “What is she talking about?”
He wouldn’t look at me. Erin did.
“Your husband gave me his arm,” she said, “when I was learning to trust my hands again. That sunflower was the first tattoo I ever managed to finish, after I got sick.”
I don’t remember my knees deciding to buckle. One moment I was standing in a fluorescent-lit aisle holding a coffee cup that had gone cold hours ago, and the next I was on the floor, the tile shockingly cold through my jeans, and Molly’s small wet hand was pressed against my cheek while the woman in front of me blurred behind a sudden wall of tears I hadn’t given permission to fall.
“Mommy?”
“I’m okay, baby,” I managed, though I wasn’t entirely sure that was true.
Brad dropped to his knees beside me instantly. “Hailey.”
I stared past him, at the sunflower. I had seen that tattoo more times than I could count — traced by Molly’s finger that very morning, glimpsed across a pillow more nights than I could name. Brad had called it ancient history not two hours earlier, as casually as if it were a stray doodle from a bored teenager. And now a stranger was standing in a store aisle telling me it was the first thing she’d ever finished after her body had tried to take that ability away from her.
“She did that?” I asked, my voice barely holding together.
He nodded.
“Why?”
Before he could answer — if he was even going to — Molly tugged impatiently at his shirt. “Daddy, I’m still wet.”
Erin laughed through her own tears, a small broken sound. Brad closed his eyes like a man bracing for something.
“Right,” he said. “Pants.”
Ten minutes later, Molly emerged from the restroom in dry clothes, her ruined dress balled up in a plastic bag. Erin was still there. Waiting. And I understood, watching my husband’s shoulders, that he had been hoping she wouldn’t be.
“Hailey doesn’t need the museum tour,” Brad said, trying for lightness again and missing badly.
“Hailey absolutely needs the museum tour,” Erin said.
Molly’s hand shot into the air like she was in school. “I want to see Daddy’s secrets.”
Brad looked down at her with something between horror and affection. “Excellent. Betrayed by my own child.”
I looked at my husband — really looked at him, the man I had shared a bed with for eleven years, and realized I had no idea what I was about to learn.
“I want to understand,” I told him.
He held my gaze for a long moment. Then, finally, he sighed. “Fine. But Erin tells it better than I do.”
I had no idea yet how much better, or how much it would cost him to let her.
PART 3
Erin led us three blocks to a converted storefront with wide windows and the words ADAPTIVE ARTS CENTER painted across the glass in cheerful, uneven letters. Inside, the walls were covered in artwork — some of it careful and precise, some of it wobbling and raw, all of it clearly made with effort that mattered more than polish.
