Lily's Healing
Chapter 17 - Lily's Healing
A year after the incident, Lily's recovery, both physical and emotional, had progressed steadily under Dr. Faust's careful, consistent guidance, her anxiety around mealtimes almost entirely resolved, her nightly need to double-check every meal before eating it gradually softening as trust, patient and deliberately rebuilt, returned fully to her daily routines.
"She's making excellent progress," Dr. Faust told Thomas, during one of their now-monthly check-ins, spaced considerably further apart than the weekly sessions of the previous year. "I want to make sure you understand this doesn't mean the experience won't surface again, in different forms, as she grows older and gains more capacity to understand what actually happened to her."
"I understand," Thomas said. "Caleb's told me the same thing, actually, about his own experience. I think I'm prepared for this to be an ongoing process rather than something that simply resolves and disappears."
Lily herself, now eight years old, had grown into a specific, hard-won resilience that both impressed and occasionally worried Thomas, a child who asked direct, sometimes difficult questions about her own history with a clarity considerably beyond her years.
"Casey says I'm brave," Lily told her father one evening, "for pointing at Renata in the diner. I didn't feel brave. I just felt like everyone needed to know the truth."
"That's exactly what brave actually is," Thomas said. "Telling the truth even when you're scared, especially when you're scared. I don't think it always feels the way people expect bravery to feel."
Ruth, present for an increasing number of Lily's ordinary days now, had become, over the preceding year, a considerably more frequent and settled presence in her granddaughter's life, the specific bond between grandmother and grandchild deepening in the aftermath of everything they'd survived together.
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"I keep thinking about how close we came to never understanding what was actually happening," Ruth told Thomas, during a quiet evening at her house, watching Lily play in the backyard with a specific, uncomplicated joy that had taken a full year to fully return. "If Casey hadn't been working that shift. If Lily hadn't been brave enough to point directly at Renata in front of everyone."
"I think about that too," Thomas admitted. "I try not to dwell on how close it came. I try to focus on the fact that it didn't happen that way. She's safe now. That's what actually matters."
