The Hunger Games: Epilogue 2
Today has been a rough day. Everywhere I turn, another memory seems to come and slap me in the face. I took a nap and Peeta took the kids to the park. I hate when this happens. I hate letting them see me cry. Peeta knows. He's the same. We take turns doing this. Last week he was taking a nap and I was in the park with the kids.
They're back now. Peeta is putting our son down for a nap. Our daughter comes running into my room. She'll be four in two months: too old for naps, she says. She's not a baby, like him. That just means that she takes one every other day.
"Mommy, are you awake?" she asks in her little voice.
I lean down and pull her onto the bed next to me. She snuggles up to my side. I bury my nose in her dark hair and kiss her temple.
"Did you have fun at the park?" I ask.
She nods. She's not really listening anymore. She's taken hold of my arm and is tracing her finger up and down the veins on my wrist. Her finger travels up my arm until she has to push up my sleeve to keep going. I don't stop her. I should, she's only three, but she's seen the scar before.
She gets to it and traces her finger around the edge of it. Somehow even at her age she knows not to touch it.
"Mommy, what's that?"
Her question catches me off guard. My chest tightens, my stomach contracts. I want to throw up, or run away.
"It's a scar," I manage to say.
"What's a scar?"
"It's the leftover mark of an old hurt."
She turns and looks at me with her blue eyes, Peeta's blue eyes.
"Mommy got hurt?" she sounds so frightened. She looks so frightened.
I wrap my arms around her. "It was a long time ago, honey," I say. "Before you were born."
She seems to accept that. Or maybe the hug distracts her.
She'll ask again someday. She'll ask how I got hurt, what happened. What will I say to her? How can I burden her with the past? But how can I not? Wouldn't that be worse?
When the time comes, Peeta will help me. We'll sit her down and we'll tell her the story. The first time, we'll have to explain it simply. We'll have to leave out parts. It will be a story that takes years to unravel. As she gets older, I'll tell her more. I'll explain more.
I'll pray that she won't hate me, or Peeta. Or fear us.
But right now, she is three, almost four. A little ball of cuddles in my arms.
"Are you Mommy's big girl?" I ask.
"Yeah!" she says.
I tickle her sides and her childish laugh fills the room. She squirms and shrieks. Her shrieks so different from the shrieks that haunt my memories.
I know I can't protect her from everything.
May this be the only time she shrieks.