Chapter 12 — Holly

The shelter was clean and safe and we shared a room with two other families, and it was the right kind of place, and I was still wrong to be there.

Holly asked me every single night, in the dark, when we could go home to Bruce. Not to the apartment we’d lost.

Not to any house. Home to Bruce. My four-year-old had understood something I was still refusing to.

Ten days in, she woke in the night burning with fever. By morning she was struggling to breathe, and there was a faint blue tinge to her lips that stopped my heart, and Sister Mary took one look and drove us straight to the regional hospital.

The pediatric specialist came to find me after a long time, and his face was careful.

Holly had a heart condition, he said.