Kira Voss's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Kira sat on the couch inside the row house. Her mother stayed in the kitchen. Her father had not come back downstairs. Maya sat beside her, their hands linked, but Kira could not stop watching the stairs. She needed to know one thing before the night ended. Did she still have a home here, or did she need somewhere else to sleep? The silence stretched for an hour. Then her mother made a phone call in the kitchen. Kira caught only a few words. A name. A request. "Can you come over? Now, if you can." Twenty minutes later, a knock came. Kira opened the door and found the woman who had cut her mother's hair for fifteen years. Stella stepped inside without waiting, scissors and pearl earrings and all, her gray hair swept back. She was the one person her mother trusted with hard things. Her mother never decided anything big without talking to her first. Stella looked at Kira a long moment. Then she smiled, soft and sure. "Well," she said. "Look at you. I always wondered when you'd let yourself out." Kira's throat tightened. "You knew?" "I guessed. Years ago." Stella set her bag down. "Your mother's scared. That's all. Scared isn't the same as gone." Her mother came out of the kitchen. She and Stella went to the far corner and spoke low. Kira couldn't hear the words. She gripped Maya's hand and waited while the two women talked. Stella did most of the talking. Her mother wiped her eyes twice. Finally her mother turned around. She crossed the room and stopped in front of Kira. For a second she just looked at her, like she was seeing her for the first time. "I don't understand all of this," her mother said. "I might get it wrong. A lot." Her voice cracked. "But you're my child. You sleep in your bed tonight. You sleep in it tomorrow. This is your home." Kira stood and her mother pulled her into a hug. It was stiff at first, then not. Kira pressed her face into her mother's shoulder and let herself shake. "Your father needs time," her mother said quietly. "He's not ready. He won't come down tonight." Kira pulled back. "And when he is ready?" Her mother didn't answer. She looked away toward the stairs. Stella picked up her bag. "One at a time, honey," she told Kira. "You got your mother back tonight. That's not nothing." Maya squeezed Kira's hand. Kira had her home. She had her bed, her mother's arms, this one safe night. But her father's door stayed shut above them, and she could hear him moving behind it, pacing, not coming down. Her mother had chosen her. Her father still hadn't. That was the next thing she'd have to face.