Blake rolled his eyes and said with a dismissive laugh, “Look at you turning this into a tragedy, it was one slap and she will survive it just fine.”
I stared at him with a kind of clarity that I had never felt before and replied quietly, “No, she will survive it because she has me, not because you decided to teach a child a lesson with your fist.”
The drive home from Blake’s house that night felt longer than any road trip I had ever taken, even though our small apartment in Riverton Springs, Colorado was only fifteen minutes away from the wealthy neighborhood where Blake lived.
Sadie sat in the backseat holding a frozen washcloth against her cheek while the streetlights slid across the windshield like silent witnesses that refused to intervene.
When we finally reached our building above a small nail salon, Sadie looked up at me with wide frightened eyes and asked quietly, “Mom, is Uncle Blake going to be mad at me forever now.”
I knelt in front of her and answered carefully, “If he is mad that is his problem, because the only thing that matters tonight is that you are safe and that nobody will ever touch you like that again.”