Free Always: Broken Series Book Four by Annie Jocoby Page B

bear with the tuxedo; Mrs. Wingle, the little stuffed dog that was “married” to Mr. Wingle; and Maddy-Tattie, a little stuffed turtle. I saw all her little books that she was just learning to read – Fun With Dick and Jane , and Winnie the Pooh.
    Georgie and Gracie, the two pugs, were on the bed. They looked at me expectantly, their tiny curly tails wagging rapidly. Gracie got on her back, begging me to scratch her tummy. They brought me back into reality, which was that I was standing in the bedroom of my 15-year-old sick daughter – not standing in the room of my 5-year-old healthy child. As much as I wanted to pretend that these last few days hadn’t happened, I knew that they had.
    I sat down on the bed with her and cleared away the hair from her eyes. She was getting so pretty – her dark hair had grown out so that it grazed her shoulders, and her blue eyes were piercing and crystalline, just like her father’s. She was slender and small-boned, just like me. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, which often happened when she got out into the sun a bit too much.
    “Honey, would you like to not go to school tomorrow? I could take you into the city, like when you were little. We could do lunch and do the Met and just do the town. We haven’t done that in awhile. There’s some good movies coming out that I’d love to see – movies that I think that you’d like too.”
    “Mom, I appreciate it, but no. I need for things to be as normal as possible. I mean, I know that I’m going to have to miss a lot of school. Well, hopefully not a lot of school, but I’m going to have to miss some days. But I don’t want to miss school if I don’t have to.”
    I smiled at my oh-so-serious daughter. “You’re pretty amazing. Most kids would jump at the chance to miss as much school as possible.”
    “Like you did, mom? When you lived in that car?” She stared at me, and I felt that she was looking just a little bit lost. “I know that you really had to bust your ass when you got back into school after that. I’m probably going to have to do the same if I end up missing as much school as I think.”
    “I did have to bust my rear.” I still didn’t want to cuss around Addison, even to say the word “ass.” Nick didn’t have a problem with that, of course – he said every word in the book around them, and never tried to cover up his language. But I still felt that Addison needed a role model, so I tried to be that for her.
    It was then that I came to an epiphany. Addison needed a role model. I had always tried to give her that. She saw me juggling work responsibilities and familial concerns, all while keeping it all together. I had brought her into work as often as I could, and I always tried to encourage her to follow her paths and her dreams, no matter what they were. She admired me. She admired what I did.
    I was letting her down. By giving up on life, drinking all the time, not eating and refusing to work, I was letting her down. She needed me to be strong. She needed that not just because she needed my support, but she also needed to see that being strong meant that you handled life’s adversity. You took all the awful things that fate had in store and you dealt with them.
    “Mom,” she said, putting her hand on my knee. “Are you okay? You’re just staring at the wall.”
    “I am.” I tousled her hair. “I just realized how dumb I’ve been. How selfish. I need to become better, healthier and less tired. I need to do all that for you. I need to find a way to be strong. You need that from me. You don’t need me to be scared and lost and timid and tired.”
    She smiled. “You’re fine, mom. Really. I mean, I’d like for you to talk to me more than you have, but it’s okay if you don’t.”
    “How did you get so mature? I remember when you were just a little tiny baby, crawling around here with a pacifier in your mouth. Now, here you are, being more grown-up about this