"Victoria," I said. "Amy."
The girls turned to look at me. Their eyes were red and puffy, their hair messy and unkempt.
You have to be strong for them.
For them.
"Come here, girls," I said, kneeling down and spreading my arms. "We're going home."
They glanced at each other, then jumped off their chairs and ran into my arms, burying their faces in my chest.
I closed my arms around my daughters and hugged them tight.
* * *
Part 2
"Amy! Victoria!" I said, walking into Victoria's room and throwing open the curtains. I turned on my girls, hands on my hips and projecting an image of sternness — I hoped. "I told you to get up ten minutes ago."
They groaned and sat up, rubbing at their eyes and blinking away sleep. Amy had her own room, of course, but she'd been having bad dreams, and I still found her sharing Victoria's bed at least once a week. Victoria glared at the curtains. "Can't we sleep in?" she said.
"You've already slept in," I pointed out. "If you don't get up now, we'll be late for school, and I refuse to let you be late on the first day." Victoria opened her mouth to protest, but I cut her off. "And before you ask: no, aunt Sarah can't fly you to school. She's not your personal airliner, and she still has a secret identity to worry about."
Victoria pouted, and Amy giggled. "But it's so much fun," Victoria said.
"I know, dear," I said, then clapped my hands together. "But you'll have to settle for the car. Now, up! Up! I made your lunches last night. Your uniforms have been ironed — don't expect that every day, either — and your bags are packed. All you need to do is get dressed, brush your teeth, and have breakfast. It's already down there, waiting for you."
Amy grinned at me. "Can we brush our teeth after breakfast?" she said. "It'll taste funny if we do it your way."
I smiled. "You can if you really want to, I suppose. So long as you do it now." I gestured upwards, and my girls climbed out of bed and trudged down the stairs, Victoria grumbling under her breath. They sat at the table and I served up the pancakes and the assorted toppings, gave them a time limit, and left them to eat.
I had to pack for myself, too.
* * *
Someone sat down next to me. "Hey, Carol."
I looked up from my sandwich. "Good morning, Alan."
Alan smiled, cracking open his own lunch — something in a paper bag emblazoned with the logo of the fast-food joint down the street. "Good to have you back."
"It's good to be back," I said. And it was — for the first time in my life, I'd taken a month's leave from work; after I'd gone to pick up the girls from school and found Amy in tears and Victoria in bruises, a few months into their fourth year, I knew I couldn't just leave them alone. So I'd been trying to give them the attention and support I knew they needed, but it was... hard.
As ashamed as I was to admit it... I had no idea how to be a parent. Especially not when work occupied so much of my time. So I'd taken a break, to be with my girls — at Sarah's suggestion, of course. I didn't know what I'd do without her.
Superheroing had... fallen at the wayside. Another first. But I just... I told myself I didn't have the time, which was true, but honestly? I didn't want to do it anymore. It was dangerous. It had never made me happy. And I wasn't convinced anything I did really mattered, not in the grand scheme of things; and I wasn't so sure Sarah's New Wave idea would actually change anything for the better.
Marquis was the only time I could say I'd made a difference, but if I were honest with myself, I hadn't gone after him as hard as I had because he was dangerous. He'd led the least egregious villain organisation in Brockton Bay; the effect he'd had on the city was minimal compared to Allfather or Galvanate — or even the Teeth, before they'd left.
No, I hadn't gone after Marquis to help people. I'd done it because I hated him. And that had almost gone horribly, horribly wrong. Donny and Neil had almost died. And I'd... I'd almost killed Amy, by accident. I hadn't been in any real danger myself, but that was only true because my opponent was Marquis. Any other villain wouldn't have hesitated to kill me, or any of the others.
And... as much as I hated to admit it, that scared me. If something happened to me, my girls would be alone.
I couldn't do that to them.
"How was your break?" Alan said. "The girls doing okay?"
"I think so. Amy's been having a lot of bad dreams lately, but... they're coping."
"And you?"
"I'm doing fine," I said. "It's been six months."
Alan raised an eyebrow. "And you were married for ten years."
"I..." I stopped, and sighed. "Balancing it all is the hardest part."
"Balancing what?"
"This. All of it. Work. Socialising. Keeping in shape. Not just... giving up. Supporting the girls — raising the girls."
"Harder to do it all alone?"
"I... don't know. I don't think it was any easier when he was alive, not really. It felt easier, but..." I sighed again. "I'm coping."
"Hmm." He pulled a pamphlet out of his pocket, and unfolded it in his hands. "I... Well, a friend of mine lost his wife not long ago. Eight months, almost. Car crash." He cleared his throat. "I've known him since college — both of them, actually. His daughter, Taylor, is friends with my Emma, and she's been spending a lot of time at our house since her mother passed. She basically lived with us the first two or three weeks. He's... never been good with grief. He took her back, of course, but she still comes `round every other week."
He blinked, then coughed into his fist. "Err, sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Point is, Zoe found this, uh, support group." He handed the pamphlet to me. "It's for single parents. Especially those who, uh... lost their partners. It's called Parents Moving Forward. She brought it up with him, and, uh... convinced him to go, to put it lightly. Beat him into going, to put it another way. He's been to three meetings, so far. They do one every fortnight, on Saturdays. At five o'clock. The next one is this weekend."
I glanced over the pamphlet. There was a cartoonish depiction of a woman holding hands with a small girl, both looking at a setting sun. Or a rising sun, I suppose. They were standing in a field of yellow flowers, maybe daisies or daffodils. The name, `Parents Moving Forward', was displayed in a bubbly font that curved above the sun. The back of the pamphlet had another cartoon portraying a man and a woman hugging platonically, accompanied by several paragraphs about how I wasn't alone and other people knew what I was going through and... so on so forth.
I looked up at Alan. "And you... want me to go to this?"
Alan pinched his chin. "Well, I think you should... consider it. And if you decide not to go, still keep it in mind. Danny — uh, that's my friend — says it's been helping him. He even got some tips on, uh, reconnecting with his daughter. She's eight, now, and she was always closest to her mother, so it hit her pretty hard. Uh, they let you bring someone with you, too, if you feel you need more support. You could take your sister, maybe. I don't know. Oh! They have a child-care service, too, so you can bring the girls. Maybe they'd make a few friends."
I nodded slowly, reading over the back of the pamphlet. "I'll think about it."
"That's all I ask," Alan said, breathing out heavily. "If you do go, my friend's name is Danny Hebert. I think you'd get along."
* * *
I debated with myself for the rest of the week. Should I go? Should I not? Why? I didn't like the idea. I was doing fine. I didn't need to... I don't know, to sit down in a circle and talk about my feelings with a bunch of strangers. How could that possibly help me? But still, a nagging part of my mind refused to let me actually discard the idea, and so I thought.
Friday arrived, and I hadn't made a decision yet. So, I sent my girls up to bed, and I did what I'd found myself doing a lot lately: I called my sister.
"You should go," she said as soon as I'd finished explaining to her, her voice muffled slightly by the phone's quiet buzzing; probably a result of dropping it one too many times.
"You think?" I said, sandwiching the phone between my ear and shoulder as I cleaned the dining table.
"Definitely," Sarah replied. There was a second of silence. "Do you not want to go?"
I scraped Victoria's leftover peas into the bin. I'm not sure why I even bothered; she never ate those. "I don't know," I sighed. "It's just... it sounds a bit too much like therapy. Only worse, because you're not even talking to a professional, just a bunch of random people."
Sarah laughed, but didn't say anything for a long moment. "When he died, you talked to me about it, remember? Actually talked about it?"
I nodded; there was only one `he' she could be referring to. Then, remembering she couldn't see me, I said, "I remember."
"Do you think that helped?"
"I... Yeah." I dumped the girls' plates in the sink. "Yeah, it helped."
"I'm glad," Sarah said. I could picture her smile. "But see, I didn't really know what you were going through. I still don't. I can barely begin to imagine what losing Neil would do to me. So I did what I could for you, but I couldn't do much."
"That's not — "
"No, shush," Sarah cut me off. "Let me finish, please. These people, the ones that you'd be meeting with... they know, right? They've lost someone too. They have kids too. They've been where you are. They actually know what you're going through. I don't; not really. And I think that would be good for you, to have people who understand, and that you can go to for advice."
I sighed. Again. "I guess you're right. But... I mean, I don't know any of these people."
"And you never will if you don't give them a chance," Sarah said. She sounded awfully self-satisfied. "Who knows? You might even make a friend."
"Maybe," I laughed, despite how sad that was. After all, I didn't really have any friends. Sarah was my best friend, but she was also my sister, so she didn't really count. Neil... I liked him, I approved of him; I even found him attractive — Sarah wouldn't be married to him if I didn't — but I didn't really think of him as a friend; he was just my sister's husband. The same applied to Donny and his girlfriend, Rebecca. Maybe Alan and Janice, from work? They could conceivably be called friends, I suppose, but I wasn't entirely sure.
And that was even more depressing.
"So you're going then?" Sarah said.
I smiled, though she couldn't see it. "Yes, Sarah. I'll go."
"Great! Okay, so what do you want to do about the girls? Use the child-care thing?"
"No," I said. "Maybe if I decide to keep going, I'll take them with me, but... not now."
"Okay," Sarah said. "We'll get Neil to look after them, then."
I went back to scrubbing the dishes. "That sounds fine. The meeting's at five, so I'll bring them over around... four?"
"Four's good. Don't worry about dropping them off, though. I'll pick you all up."
"You will?" I said, frowning. "What for?"
"Well, I'm going with you, obviously."
I paused.
"If that's okay, of course," she added.
"I... Yeah, that's fine. I was going to ask, actually. You just... surprised me. But yeah, I'd like to have you there."
"Great!" She sounded happy. "I'll see you tomorrow, then?"
"Yeah," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."
* * *
True to her word, Sarah picked us up around four. We dropped the girls off at her house, where Crystal greeted them excitedly — she was in middle school now, sixth grade, so she didn't see my girls as much. I said hello to Donny and Rebecca, who would be watching my girls with Neil, and we moved on to the meeting; I'd called the number on the pamphlet that morning to let them know we'd be coming, and they'd given me the address.
We pulled up at our destination, parking on the curb across the street. The meeting was being held in a church, which... didn't exactly fill me with confidence. There was a big marble cross on the steep, peaked roof, and slabs of stone embedded in the grass, forming a wavy path from the asphalt to the wide wooden double-doors. A sign taped to the door, just below the stained glass window, told me we were in the right place.
Sarah turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder. "Ready?"
I took a deep breath. "Yeah," I said, and pushed the door open.
The inside was your typical church fare: long wooden benches in rows either side of the nave, with an altar at the end and aisles along the sides. There was nobody there; no priests or church-goers or anyone. Another support group sign sat just before the benches, pointing toward one of the side passages. I followed it along, leaving the main body of the church behind, Sarah trailing after me, our footsteps echoing about the empty halls.
At the end of the hall were two more signs; one pointed outside and read `Childcare' — I could hear kids out there, laughing and shouting — while the second anointed a door on my left, reading `Please knock!' I did so, and a few seconds later the door was opened by a stupidly beautiful latino woman.
It wasn't often I felt jealousy.
"Carol Dallon?" she said, brushing dark hair behind one ear. She didn't have an accent.
I nodded. "Yes, that's me." I gestured to Sarah. "And this is my sister, Sarah."
She smiled and held out a hand. I shook it, as did Sarah. "I'm Maria," she said, moving back so we could pass. "We spoke on the phone. Nice to meet you."
"Same to you," I said, entering the room with Sarah beside me. The room wasn't particularly large. There were tables pushed up against the walls, one lined with rows of various crackers and dips and other assorted snacks, a few jugs of water and plastic cups sitting off to one side. `Parents Moving Forward' was displayed in bright letters printed on one of those frilly string banners where each letter had its own little flag, hung across the back wall.
Maria ticked something off of a clipboard she was holding, then folded her hands over it and turned to us. "Would you like a drink?"
I shook my head, but Sarah accepted, and Maria fetched her a cup of water. Then she took us over to the middle of the room, where a group of other people sat in chairs arranged in a circle — exactly as I'd imagined. Four women, including Maria, and three men. A few of them smiled or raised a hand in greeting as we approached. Maria pulled up two padded chairs for Sarah and I, and we all took our seats.
"Jamie's not coming today," Maria said, putting her clipboard on the floor and looking around the assembly. "She says Jonas has a dentist appointment, so everyone who's coming is here, now. And we have a new attendee!" She smiled and turned to me. "Carol? Would you like to introduce yourself? Tell us a little about your situation? Just the basics is fine, we can get into details later."
