Chapter 17 - ROMY AND THE HORSE
Romy stopped playing with Pickles.
That scared me.
For weeks, the rocking horse sat beside her dresser.
She touched it sometimes.
Would not ride.
“Broken?”
“It’s fixed.”
“No.”
She pointed to the saddle.
“Key place.”
Ah.
The horse had become connected to the slap.
To adults fighting.
To court.
I had turned it into evidence too.
Photographs.
Lawyers.
Questions.
Maya Chen, Romy’s therapist, said:
“Let the horse become boring again.”
How?
“Stop talking about what it revealed.”
So we did.
No:
Grandpa hid a key in there.
No:
That horse saved us.
Because it didn’t.
One Saturday I found Romy putting a blanket over it.
“What are you doing?”
“Pickles sleeping.”
Good.
Two weeks later she sat on it.
Rocked once.
Stopped.
Then again.
No applause.
I stayed in the kitchen.
By spring, Pickles lived beside a pile of stuffed animals.
Exactly where he belonged.
The brass key went into my document safe.
Not the horse.
May you like
Dad had hidden it once.
Romy did not need to carry adult secrets in a toy.
