Chapter 5 - What Happened Next
The social worker spoke then, in that even, practiced voice people use when they've spent a career stepping into the worst moments of other people's lives. "Emma is staying here tonight. She won't be leaving with you until this is resolved."
Melissa's eyes went wide. "You can't do that."
"Yes," the woman said. "We can."
For the first time since I'd arrived at that hospital, I felt something close to relief. Not because the horror was any smaller. But because, finally, someone in the room had stopped looking at my sister as a mother first, and started looking at her as a threat first.
Melissa tried to move toward Emma. The girl flinched and stepped behind me. That gesture settled everything that still needed settling.
I squeezed my niece's hand. "It's okay," I whispered. "You're not alone anymore."
And while my sister started screaming that I was stealing her daughter, that I couldn't possibly understand what it meant to love someone who was sick, that she was only trying to save her husband — I understood something that's going to stay with me for the rest of my life.
Sometimes the real danger doesn't walk through the door looking like a monster.
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Sometimes it just asks you to watch its daughter for the weekend, and quietly hopes you'll never lift the strap of her swimsuit.
THE END
