Wishing and praying it had all been a mistake and he was sitting in some hospital somewhere, maybe with amnesia, and one day he’d come back and whisk me away from all this. Somehow it hurt more that they were my own mom and sister, not some evil steps who wanted me out of the way. It made that pain even worse. I was part of my mom and all she wanted to do was cut that part of herself out and throw the rest of me away. Throw my dad away. But I wanted the books first. I wanted the Peter Rabbit books she’d promised me. I needed them to remember those rainy days with my dad, curled up in his
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