It's five minutes to midnight, and Julia Heartilly wakes with a start, confused for a moment before she recognizes that she is not in her own bed. Rinoa is curled up against her, the book they were reading together still resting on her legs. She is sound asleep.
Julia tilts her head down and kisses the top of her daughter's head, and follows it with a deep breath. Rinoa's hair smells like chamomile. A new shampoo that a friend who is into that sort of thing recommended, to help her sleep. Apparently it worked on both of them, although Julia was tired long before she lay down in Rinoa's bed to read.
She knows she should get up. Most nights, she is anxious for Rinoa to finally fall asleep. For the moment when her breathing evens out, and the iron-tight grip she has on Julia's arms loosens. Most nights, she slides out of her daughter's bed the first chance she gets and tiptoes downstairs, to work, to clean, to breathe, because having a four year old is exhausting, and Rinoa is nothing but energy and movement and nonstop chatter.
Tonight, the work calls to her. She needs to finish wrapping the last of Rinoa's birthday presents, so they'll be ready when she wakes up in the morning. Fury comes home tomorrow, after weeks away, and she is supposed to start recording a new album the day after that. She says she's got it written, but all that means is that her studio is littered with paper, lyrics and notes scratched front and back and hardly a single finished song to be found. One of her new pieces floats through her head, even now, and her chest tightens with how every passing second is one she won't get back.
And yet—every passing second, is one she won't get back.
Rinoa inhales sharply, and Julia pulls her closer.
She thinks of the headlines that questioned her career, when she took a year off from touring after Rinoa was born, and the ones that still pop up, assuming her best days are behind her—when they aren't assuming she's having another child. They plagued her, during that year. Made her question herself in ways she never had before, as a performer, as a woman, but especially as a mother. Rinoa deserved better than a life lived in the public eye, and it was a hard fight for their privacy. But if she walked away from music, who would she be? Would she resent her daughter, for making her choose? Would motherhood be enough, to fill the space left behind if she stopped performing? And what would she tell her daughter, years down the road, when she wondered if she was strong enough to do all the things she hoped to do.
Of course you are enough. Julia tightens her embrace, and burrows her face into Rinoa's thin, dark hair, kisses her once more, and slowly slides out of the bed. You will always be enough. She pushes back the familiar twinge of guilt, and stands in the doorway, watching Rinoa's chest rise and fall with every breath.
"Good-bye, four-year-old," she whispers, and closes the door. In the morning Rinoa will be five, and it feels like a much bigger change than she has prepared for.
Inspired by my neighbor, and how she says goodnight to her children on the eve of their birthdays.