Page 70 of Hero for the Holidays

Except she wasn’t around the food.

They still had her present to give her.

And... Fia’s heart started to pound. She knew that she shouldn’t get panicked. But she felt...panicked. Because she couldn’t see her child. She didn’t know where she was.

She’s not a toddler.

No, but something was wrong. She could feel it. Lila had been edgy since she had come to the door.

I’ll be right back, she mouthed to Landry, then swept out of the room and looked around the living room.

Then she slipped outside.

She looked across the yard, and she could see a small, slim figure sitting on a swing, her head bowed low.

Fia let out a sigh of relief, and then she ran across the yard. “Lila,” she called, jogging to where she was.

Lila lifted her head. “What?” She wiped her tears on her arm.

“Are you okay?”

“No,” she said miserably.

Panic hit her, full in the chest. She’d messed this up. By trying to be too much too soon she’d messed this up. “I’m sorry. Maybe the birthday party was too much. I wanted to do something nice for you.”

“It was your idea?” Lila asked.

“Well. Yeah. I’m sorry, though. Maybe we should’ve told you.”

Lila shook her head. “No. It was a really nice thing to do. I appreciate it.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I just... It’s hard to believe sometimes. That this is my life.”

It was so funny. Of course, not funny funny. Nothing about this was funny. But just the connections between herself and Landry, and now Lila. The way that they were all grappling with this in such similar ways. The way that their thoughts were often linked.

“Me neither,” said Fia. “Sometimes I can’t believe you’re real. I can’t believe you’re here.”

Lila’s eyes went round. “Really?”

“I know it’s hard to imagine when you’re thirteen, but... You don’t really feel on top of everything when you’re an adult. I think that’s the saddest thing I’ve learned. I gave you up because I didn’t think I could possibly do right by you when I was sixteen. And I’m twenty-nine and I don’t feel a lot different. That’s kind of upsetting.”

“I was hoping that eventually you just felt like you knew everything.”

Oh, how Fia wished that were true.

“Sadly no. And it must be hard for you. Because you’ve been through so much. Losing your parents is hard enough, but having nowhere stable to be, having to move through so many different houses...” She took a deep breath, and decided to ask the question that had been burning inside of her, the one that hooked into her own insecurities, her own worries. “Do you feel like I’m babysitting you?”

Lila didn’t look up at her. “I feel like you’re another foster family or something. It’s weird. I’ve been bouncing around so much the last year that everything kind of feels like that. None of this feels real. I didn’t really know what to do when my social worker said that they found Landry. That he was my biological father. I...”

Suddenly, Lila started to sob. Great racking sounds that moved through her small body. And Fia didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. So she got down on her knees, and she pulled her off the swing, into her lap, hugging her. Holding her. “I wanted you both to find me. Because I didn’t have anybody. Not in the whole world.” And suddenly two fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Landry hadn’t mentioned this at all. Her crying. Her being emotional.

Fia felt frozen.

“I just thought it was a nightmare. That my parents were dead.” She sniffed loudly. “I kept thinking I’d wake up, or hoping I’d die too. And my parents’ families were bad people. Dysfunctional and into drugs and alcohol and they’d never wanted me to go with them. But they didn’t...have anyone picked to take care of me. And that started to make me angry.”

Fia felt like she was stranded in a wilderness, searching for wisdom. “They probably couldn’t even think about the possibility of not being there for you. They...they waited for you. They wanted you so much.”

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