The Step After the First
The second step was harder because now Poppy knew the first had been real.
Hope has weight. For a child, it can feel heavier than a cast.
Her arms shook against the crutches. Water moved around her bare foot and tapped the plastic wall of the pool. A neighbor's window opened somewhere across the lane, then closed again when whoever stood there understood this was not for watching.
Poppy inhaled through her nose like the therapist had taught her.
"I do not want it to hurt," she said.
"It can hurt and still be yours," Theo said.
It was not a sentence Edward expected from a seven-year-old boy. Then again, Theo often said things as if he had borrowed them from older sorrow and made them smaller for children to carry.
Poppy lifted the cast again.
This time it slipped sideways. One crutch skidded on wet plastic. Theo moved fast, but he did not grab her first. He caught the crutch and pushed it steady under her hand.
Poppy gasped.
Edward took one step forward before he could stop himself. Grass bent under his shoe.
Poppy heard it.
She turned.
For one terrible second, Edward thought he had ruined everything.
His daughter stared at him from the pool, face flushed, eyes wide, hair stuck damply to her cheek. Theo froze beside her, still kneeling, as if he had been caught stealing sunlight.
The garden went quiet.
Then Poppy looked at the books under Edward's arm.
"Are those for me?" she asked.
Edward could not trust his voice, so he nodded.
"They are blank," she said.
He swallowed. "I thought we could fill them together."
Poppy looked down at her cast, then back at him.
"I did one without you."
May you like
Edward stepped closer, slowly, hands open.
"I know," he said. "And I am so proud I almost cannot stand up."
