OPHELIA
“You’re smiling a lot, Mommy. It’s nice.” Molly beams up at me as I hold her hand. Our footprints trail behind us in the wet sand at the sea’s edge—a morning walk before breakfast.
It’s still a little chilly with a gray layer of cloud on the horizon and the sky a pale blue. The waves are choppy from the wind, which blows my olive-green gauze skirt against my legs as we walk.
“I have reasons to smile,” I reply in a light voice. Some of the reasons, I can even tell her: we’re away from her daddy, we’re safe, nobody’s going to hurt us like that again. It hurts my heart that she understands, at such a young age, that her father was a terrible person—someone to be afraid of.
Then there’s the one big reason I can’t tell her about—at least not until she’s a whole lot older. I learned
