And Our Scars Remind Us The Past is Real

It wasn’t an alarm clock that woke the twenty-one year old up, but instead the sound of her daughter’s laughter from the adjacent room. Dark eyes peeled open, and Hunter stretched with a soft yawn, rolling her eyes as she unfolded herself from the blanket. The clock beside her bed flashed ‘7:45′. Hmm, it seemed that Bella had actually slept in 45 minutes today.  “Goodmorning, baby,” She mumbled, moving into the nursery and smirking at her toddler on the floor. Little Bella, who had recently learned how to pull herself out of her crib, beamed up at her mother. Her blonde hair was slowly but surely darkening, which was a silent but large relief to Hunter. Despite the passing of time, Hunter couldn’t erase the fear that one day her baby would look exaclty like her biological father. It wouldn’t change anything, but she selfishly wanted her child to look like her mother. Her therapist told her that there was nothing wrong with the desire, and that time would continue to heal those memories. She took it in stride every single morning.  Plucking the child up, Hunter moved sluggishly to the kitchen to pour them both some milk, cooing happily to the squirming baby, “You get to play with Uncle Jacky today. Momma has a meeting and then we can all watch a movie.”  The kitchen- well, rather the entire house- was smaller than Hunter had every experienced before. Two bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, two bathrooms...it was the perfect size for the two of them, and she felt more at home here than she had anywhere else. It helped that this was the first place she’d paid for on her own.  A few months after living in LA, Hunter had sold her book to a publishing company and it had spread like wildfire. The organization that she and Aly had started was bursting with life, helping those who had been in similar situations to her own exposing sex rings, and spreading the awareness. It felt good to be helping other people. It felt even better knowing that even people she didn’t speak to directly knew that they weren’t alone in the world.  Plopping Bella in her highchair, she bustled around to make breakfast for them both, glancing at the calendar on the wall with a feint smile. It was marked with different colored ‘X’ and times...It had been three weeks since Mia had slipped into control and five since there had been any sign of Mia. They only slipped out every now and again, and the system put in place by the three of them to make things work had kept anything bad from happening.  The medication helped, and the continued therapy was crucial to her road of recovery. It wasn’t an easy journey, and sometimes there were days when she felt as if she were drowning, Hunter had come to realize and accept that those days were simply a part of life. The good outweighed the bad- usually.  Kissing Bell’s head, she sat down beside her to make sure that most of her fod ended up in her mouth instead of on the floor. She sent out her usual morning texts to Ryder and Jude and Elodie and Reed, sending all four a snapchat of Bella with oatmeal all over her chin. She checked to make sure that Abby still wanted to get lunch on Friday, and decided she’d pop in to make sure that Faye was holding up alright.  She allowed her thoughts to drift toward others...Clara, Raime, Seth Levi, Jake, James- God, she missed him, Oliver, Nina, Spencer...and for the first time- because she didn’t let herself dwell on the past all  that often- it didn’t hurt to think about them.  Hunter laughed as Bella started mimicking the ‘airplane’ noises used on her so often, feeling light as she thought about Annabel.. It was a shame she hadn’t given herself the chance to reach this point. It was sad to realize that her once-best-friend never let herself feel this simple happiness.  “Don’t worry,” she murmured, tilting her face to the sun flitting in from the windows, “I haven’t let anyone tell me I can’t shake my pompoms.”