Free The Snow Angel by Glenn Beck, Nicole Baart Page B

words, my handsfluffing the air as if to encompass the whole of our fabricated lives. “From this.”
    Lily pressed her teddy bear to her chest hard enough to make his fat arms look like sausages. She watched me for a long minute, and I could see the thoughts spin behind her clear eyes. Finally she seemed to reach a conclusion. Carefully setting the bear aside, she held out her hands to me. “You should have told me,” she said when I wove my fingers through hers. “I can take it.”
    “But—”
    “I want to know the truth,” Lily said.
    “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”
    “I do.” Lily narrowed her eyes. “I might be a kid, but I’m not stupid.” She slid her hand up my arm and pushed the sleeve of my sweater away from my wrist. There were three yellow marks there, all that remained of an old bruise. Cyrus had just grabbed me harder than he meant to, but the end result was the same: I had evidence to cover.
    “It’s nothing,” I said, tugging the sleeve back down.
    “Fine.” Lily threw herself back on the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. “Go away, Mom. I want to be alone.”
    I knew in that moment that I stood at a crossroads. I could go on pretending that everything was okay; I could continue to whitewash a home that was slowly, endlessly decaying. Or I could admit that the facade was only as deep asthe thinnest coat of smiles and lies. As I studied my daughter’s huddled form, I realized that maintaining the deception was no life at all. Lily would never trust me again if I wasn’t honest with her. And I couldn’t lose my baby.
    “What do you want to know?” I breathed the question so softly I wondered if she would even hear me.
    “Everything,” Lily said definitively.
    I squeezed my eyes shut and wished her request away. But I knew that she wouldn’t back down. My daughter was strong in ways I could only imagine. “Okay,” I said after several long heartbeats. “It’s not a pretty story.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “I’m not a storyteller.”
    “Mom.” Lily rolled to face me. “Stop making excuses. I want to know.”
    “Why?”
    She bit her bottom lip, considering. Then she sighed a little. “Because no one stood between you and the monster under your bed.”
    My throat tightened. “Sweetheart …”
    “I know it’s probably too late,” Lily continued, “but you once told me that sometimes all you need is someone to listen.” She gave me a brave, beautiful smile. “I’m listening.”

     
    When I was Lily’s age, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that no one was listening. I had already taken to calling my mother Bev, not because she asked me to, but because she didn’t seem like much of a mom to me. My friends had mothers who baked cookies for them and braided their hair. My so-called mom told me cookies would make me fat and assured me that no amount of braiding would tame my curls. Her verbal abuse was hurtful in the beginning, but by the time I was old enough to realize what she was doing, it didn’t pain me so much anymore. Instead, I avoided her as much as possible and shrank away from the rest of the world for good measure.
    Bev called me “mousy” once—a rather mild put-down in light of her usual slander—and after I met a mouse up close and personal I decided that I rather liked the comparison. I would happily be mousy all the days of my life.
    One of the boys in my fifth-grade class caught a baby field mouse in his backyard and brought it in to our science class for show and tell. The little mouse became a mascot of sorts, and our teacher allowed us to keep it in an old aquarium that we filled with wood shavings and some old hamster paraphernalia that someone donated. Everyone loved the mouse, but no one understood the tiny brown-and-white pup quite like I did.
    I loved to watch her curl into a perfect ball, her body round and seamless as a chestnut. She blended into thewood chips, so still and so perfectly camouflaged as to be