Chapter 277: Be a family again.
Fabian..
We checked into the suite just past dusk, the sky outside bleeding into soft shades of orange and violet over the water.
It was a private suite, tucked away from the rest of the resort, all clean lines and warm wood, floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a wide balcony that looked out over the ocean.
A deep soaking tub sat framed by its own window in the bathroom, the kind built for long, unhurried evenings neither of us had had in longer than I could remember. Soft linens draped the bed.
Fresh flowers sat untouched on the table. Everything about the room spoke of quiet luxury, the exact kind of escape I knew my little fairy would have loved, would have spun in circles over, throwing her arms out to take in the view, if she were herself right now.
She wasn’t. She moved through the space like something hollowed out, her eyes passing over the balcony, the view, the tub, without a flicker of recognition. It broke something in me, watching her walk past all of it without so much as a glance, but I ground my jaw and said nothing, simply guided her further into the room while the nurse settled quietly into hers next door.
I undressed her gently once we were alone, careful of the bandages, careful of every place I knew still hurt beneath her skin, easing her out of her clothes and into one of my old shirts, the soft grey one she used to steal from my closet on nights she didn’t want to be Indigo the mother, or Indigo the hacker, or Indigo anyone at all, just mine, wrapped in something that smelled like me.
She let me dress her without a word, then walked straight to the bed and lay down, curling in on herself, eyes open, staring at nothing.
I changed out of my own clothes into a loose pair of grey sweatpants and a plain white shirt, glancing at her once more before stepping quietly out onto the balcony to make a call I’d been putting off far too long.
“Coco!” Lila’s voice burst through the phone before I’d even finished dialing properly, bright and sudden, and it pulled the first real smile out of me in days.
“Hi, princess,” I said, my voice cracking slightly around the warmth of it. “I missed you.”
“I miss you too, Coco. I dreamt about you and Mama today—”
“Yesterday, pumpkin,” Rita corrected gently from somewhere in the background.
“Yess! Yesterday.” Lila adjusted without missing a beat, and despite everything, it pulled a laugh out of me.
“What did you dream about, princess? I hope it was a good one.”
“Mm-hm,” she said. “You and Mama came to Grandma’s and we all played together. Where’s Mama? Is she there with you?”
My smile threatened to crack right down the middle at the question, but I held it together, forcing my voice to stay light. Lila was sharp, eight years old going on thirty, the smartest of all her little friends, and I couldn’t let her sense that anything was wrong.
Not over the phone, from thousands of miles away, with nothing I could do to hold her if she cried.
“Mama’s asleep right now, princess,” I said. “But she misses you so much. I’ll have her call you the second she wakes up, okay?”
Her small shoulders sagged, visible even through the phone in the way her voice dropped. “Is Mama gonna come here? How long is she gonna stay there? What about you? Are you coming? I want us to be one big happy family again.”
My throat closed around everything I couldn’t say to her. Lila didn’t know she’d lost a sibling, a sibling she would have adored, would have mothered fiercely the way she did every stray thing she ever loved.
She had no idea what her mother had survived, what all of us had survived, and I intended to keep it that way for as long as I possibly could.
I cleared my throat, forcing warmth back into my voice. “We’re coming very soon, baby. Just enjoy Grandma Tee and Aunt Rita a little longer for me, okay? Do you need anything?”
She shook her head, her mood still visibly low. “Tell Mama I love her. I love you too, Coco.”
“I love you, my sweetheart,” I said, my chest aching with how much I meant it. “I’ll call you later with more stories, okay?”
“Okay, Coco. Bye.”
The call ended, and my hand dropped to my side, my head hanging as I let myself feel the full weight of it for one unguarded second. Then I straightened, turned to walk back into the room only to stop cold.