Prince Charming Can Wait (Ever After) (6 page)

Mattie didn't move, but she didn't jerk away either.

Holding her breath, Emma inched along the roof, along the ledge that was barely two feet wide. She reached Mattie and sat next to her. She wanted to grab her, hug her, and pull her to safety, but she didn't dare move, terrified she would spook the little girl.

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Emma's heart was thudding painfully in her chest, she was so terrified of saying the wrong thing and spooking Mattie. "I missed you in class today," she said finally. "We did clay butterflies."

Mattie didn't lift her head.

"I painted one purple with pink sparkles," Emma added, gesturing at the woman not to come out. "I named it Tom."

"Tom is a boy's name," Mattie said quietly.

Relief rushed through Emma when she heard Mattie's voice. "He's a boy who likes pink sparkles."

"Boys don't like pink."

"Tom does."

"Tom must be a girl."

Emma smiled. "He might be. I didn't actually ask him."

Mattie finally looked up, and Emma's heart broke at the anguish in the little girl's eyes. Streaks of tears had dried in rivulets on her light brown cheeks. "You should have asked," Mattie said. "Butterflies like to be asked."

Emma nodded. "You're right. I'll ask him when I go back to the center." She raised her brows. "Unless you want to talk to him?"

Mattie looked at Emma. "I don't want to go live with Grammy and Pappy," she whispered. "But since Aunt Lucy and Uncle Roger can't keep me, they might make me go."

Emma's heart tightened. "No one is going to send you to South Carolina—"

"They will. I heard Chloe talking about it."

"She was?" Emma had heard enough about the grandparents to know that wasn't a place for a child. Pappy had a temper that terrified Mattie, and Grammy wasn't any better. Emma struggled to keep her voice calm. "Oh, sweetie, it will work out—"

"How? How will it work out?" Mattie lowered her voice to a whisper. "I hate it there. They ignore me. It's like I'm invisible. Like a ghost they can't see. One day, I sat in the barn for a whole day to see if anyone would look for me, but no one did. I even slept there, and my skin hurt from the hay prickles in the morning. No one came to find me until my mom came back from work in the morning. She cared, but she's dead. No one thinks it matters that I'm like a ghost, or that it's a bad thing. But it is."

Emma felt like her own heart was going to fragment. "I know it is," she said. "I was ignored when I was a child, too. It makes you feel like your heart is breaking every minute of every day."

Mattie stared at her. "Yes," she whispered. "Exactly like that. Who ignored you?"

"My parents." It wasn't simply being ignored. It had been so much more than that, but that was as far as she would take it with Mattie, though she knew that Mattie was dealing with far more than being ignored as well. Mattie was facing longings that Emma's arid childhood had evoked in her, the ones that had led her into a marriage she thought would save her. Instead, the marriage that she'd thought would be her salvation had destroyed her...but at the same time, it had also finally given her the courage to not need anyone anymore. Not a marriage, not a man—

Her mind involuntarily flashed back to the previous night, to the encounter with Harlan. To his kiss. The haunting of his dark eyes. The depth of his pain.

She immediately cut herself off from thinking about him. There was no space in her life for a man, for anyone who would betray her, the same way that life was betraying Mattie. She managed a smile. "It doesn't matter what other people think, Mattie. Ignore the ones who don't believe in you, and pay attention to the people that do care. Like me." Her voice thickened ever so slightly, and she had to clear her throat. "You matter to me."

A small smile played at the corner of Mattie's mouth. "I do?"

"Of course you do."

"Pinkie swear?"

Emma laughed and held up her hand. "Pinkie swear." They locked pinkies, and then Emma pulled Mattie into her arms, giving her a hug. "Now, will you please do me a favor and come inside so I can stop worrying that you're going to fall on your bum and squish all the flowers in the yard?" Or crack her head open, but she didn't want to put that out there.

Mattie squinted at her. "There are no flowers in the yard."

Emma grinned. "Then we should plant some."

"I don't live here. I don't want to plant any." She looked at Emma. "Can I go visit you? Can we plant some there? You always talk about how pretty the lake is. I want to go there."

Down below, Chloe's car pulled in, and Emma grimaced, hoping she wasn't going to get Chloe in trouble for giving Emma the address. "I'll talk to Chloe and see what we can work out, okay?"

"Promise?" Mattie gave her a solemn look.

Emma knew that a broken promise would not do her any favors. Broken promises were cruel beyond words, the instruments to broken dreams and shattered hearts. "I promise I will do everything I can, Mattie."

An understanding too mature for a five-year-old settled in Mattie's dark eyes. "Okay." But there was a flatness to Mattie's tone as she stood up and walked back toward the window, and Emma knew that Mattie didn't believe the world would offer her good things anymore.

Emma scrambled to her feet and hurried after her, catching her hand and holding it tightly as Mattie carefully scooted her dirty pink sneakers along the ledge. Emma remembered when those sneakers had been new, the last present Mattie's mom had given her.

Now they were dirty, tearing at the seams. The laces were frayed, the shoes most likely too small, and yet Mattie wore them every single day. To Mattie, they were the last thing she had to cling to, the last breath of life as she wanted it to be.

Dirty, worn shoes were all Mattie had to hold her tiny, fragile heart together, and Emma knew from her own experience that it wouldn't be enough. There had to be something she could do to help Mattie, to make her life turn out differently than Emma's had. She had to find a way to give Mattie something real to believe in, something more viable than an elusive and hopeless kiss stolen on a dark night with a man who was nothing more than a passing shadow slipping through her fingers.

Emma cornered Chloe the moment the social worker returned to her car, after she'd settled Mattie back inside and talked with the foster mom. "Mattie says you're going to send her to South Carolina," Emma said.

Chloe sighed and pushed her dark hair back from her face. She was wearing jeans and a tee shirt, indicating that she'd been in the middle of something unrelated to work when Emma had called, which was unusual given that it was still early in the afternoon on a weekday. Chloe was relentless in her job. "It's looking possible. Her uncle just got arrested again, and her aunt hasn't shown up for work in three days. The judge doesn't want her there."

Emma glanced back at the house with the peeling paint and crooked shutters. "She can't go to South Carolina. Her grandparents aren't good people—"

"They're better than her aunt and uncle, and that's all she's got."

"Well, it's not enough! They aren't even capable of keeping track of her! Did she tell you how she spent the night in the barn and no one even noticed?"

Chloe grimaced. "I know. We had the social worker down there evaluate them." She sighed. "I'll admit, Em, that there are significant issues with them, but trust me that when I say that they're still better than a foster home."

Emma felt a chill go through her. "What issues? What else is the matter with them?" Dear God, what were they going to send Mattie to? Being ignored was bad enough, but what hadn't the five-year-old shared, or possibly even realized, about her grandparents?

But Chloe shook her head. "It's confidential, Em. You know I can't say, but know that if she goes there, a social worker will visit regularly to make sure she's...safe."

"Safe?
Safe?
You have to check on them to make sure she's even
safe
?" Where did loved and nurtured fall under that low standard? "There has to be someone else in the family—"

"There isn't," Chloe said, looking tired. "It sucks, but at least she has relatives willing to take her in. Otherwise, she'd be in foster care for good."

Emma tried to imagine the little girl so far away, hiding in that barn from people who ignored her. Her hands started to shake and a cold chill settled in her bones. "She can't go to South Carolina."

"Well, what do you suggest? You want to take her?"

Emma stared at Chloe in shock. "What?"

"Never mind." Chloe pulled open the door of her rusting Volkswagen. "I need to go—"

"No, wait." Emma grabbed the frame of her door. "Could I foster Mattie? Or even...adopt her?" The words tumbled out before she even meant to say them. The idea was terrifying, but at the same time, it felt right, so right. If she could help her—

Chloe sighed. "Emma, you're freaking out right now, but it's all going to work out—"

Emma gripped the car door. "I'm serious. Could I?"

Chloe's eyes narrowed. "Emma, first of all, Mattie has two sets of relatives willing to take her. You're not related, and you're not even married anymore. You've known her for less than a year. No judge is going to think a single, unrelated woman is a better option for her than family."

"But her family sucks."

"It's the way it is," Chloe said, her voice softening. "I know it's hard, but Mattie is luckier than some kids who lose their parents."

Emma looked up at the house and saw Mattie's face appear in one of the third floor windows, watching her. In that window, she looked so tiny and alone, a little girl completely lost. God, how many times had Emma done the same thing? Sat in the window and wished for something to be different? Emma felt her heart start to break again. "Can I at least foster her instead of this family? Or take her for a weekend?"

"Don't do it."

Emma stared at Chloe. "Why not?"

"Because Mattie doesn't need her heart broken again. If she gets too attached to you, it's one more loss she will have to suffer when she loses you."

"She won't lose me—"

"No?" Chloe tossed her purse onto the front seat. "Are you going to move to rural South Carolina to hang out with her when she gets placed with her grandparents?"

Emma's throat tightened. "Just one weekend. Just to give her a break. The town's summer festival is coming up and she'd love it—"

"Don't do that to her, Emma. It's not fair to her to bring her into your world just because you're lonely."

"I'm not doing this for me. I'm not lonely—"

Chloe gave her a penetrating look as she slid into the driver's seat. "You just got divorced yesterday. Your dreams are shattered. You're reeling, I know you are." She managed a grim smile. "Trust me, I know. You're in no place to make decisions like this. You're not going to be able to adopt her, so don't try to foster her. Seriously. Be Mattie's friend, but you need to let her deal with her own life or she won't be strong enough to cope with it." She turned on the car. "I need to go." She pushed a tangled strand of brown hair off her face, and Emma suddenly noticed how tired Chloe looked.

"You okay?" she asked.

Chloe hesitated, then shrugged. "No time for anything but to be okay, right?"

It was a lie. Something was seriously wrong with her friend. Emma put her hand on the door as Chloe shifted into drive. "Want to get a drink one night this week? Girl time?"

"I can't. I have some stuff I need to deal with." Chloe glanced back at the house and waved to Mattie, who was still watching them. "A heart can be broken only so many times," she said softly. "Don't break hers again, Emma. It's not fair."

Emma closed her eyes. "I would never break her heart."

"Not on purpose, no, but by accident? It's very possible. There's not much holding her together right now." Chloe waved her back so she could close the door. "Go home, Emma. Give yourself a break."

Then she shut the door and drove off, leaving Emma on the sidewalk.

For a long moment, she could only stand there watching Mattie in the window of that huge house, until her mind no longer saw a little brown face with dark pigtails, but a blond-haired, green-eyed girl whose spirit was breaking day by day, night by night...the girl she had once been...

Tears burned her eyes, and with a small wave at Mattie, Emma turned away.

The grief would not stop.

It was long past midnight, and the tears would not stop flowing. Emma wrapped the blanket more tightly around herself, as if the weight of the wool would stop the chills from digging in deeper.

The moon was bright on the water, and her rickety dock was hard beneath her butt, which was numb from over two hours of sitting on the bare wood, but still she didn't move. What had all this been for? Five years of marriage, two years of hell trying to get out of it, and then today's terrible day with Mattie...

Isolation pressed down upon her. Failure. A sense of hopelessness. Fresh tears streamed free, and all the recent years of trying to be strong seemed to be nothing more than a great joke on her. It was too hard, seeing her friends moving into their roles as wives and mothers. How hard she'd tried to find that, how hard she'd fought in her marriage, only to have it spoil and fester in ways she could never have conceived of.

Her prince, the man who had swept her out of her life and thrust her into a fairytale, had been nothing but a monster who had nearly destroyed her. Chloe was right. There was no joy in knowing that her marriage was finally over. It was just a sense of loss. Of failure. A grim truth of what life was really like. It hadn't felt real these last two years while she'd been going through the divorce. Too much battling, too much confrontation, too much survival just to get through each day.

But now that the fight was over, she felt like she'd been left drained and exhausted on a patch of mud, with no strength or will left to pick up and start over with. And Mattie, her dear, sweet Mattie. Looking at her with those troubled eyes when no one else could reach her. How could she have let her down like that? How—