As soon as Kate walked into the house, she was greeted by a chorus of exclamations.
"Momma!" Anna cried as she toddled over to her mother. Kate smiled down at her as she unclipped her gun and stored it along with her badge. When she was done, she leaned down and scooped the two-year-old into her arms and gave her a kiss.
"Hello, Anna." Kate said as she kissed her head. "Where are Daddy and Maggie?"
"Playin'." The little girl answered as Kate carried her into the family room where Rick was on the floor with Maggie.
"Mumma!" Maggie shouted and she gave her mother a dazzling smile and a wave.
"Hi, Maggie." Kate replied as she set Anna back on the floor and folded herself down to sit beside Rick. "And hello to you, too." She added as she leaned over and kissed her husband.
"Hi. They got hungry so we ate already, but I left a plate in the oven for you." Rick informed her with a smile as Maggie tried to climb his back to get onto his shoulders.
Kate nodded and gave her twins one last kiss before she stood and made her way to the kitchen to eat the dinner Rick had saved her. When she turned to enter the kitchen, she found Bex sitting on the couch with an odd look on her face.
"Bex! How long have you been sitting there?" Kate asked, certain she hadn't seen her oldest daughter when she walked in.
Bex shrugged. "A while, I guess." She answered.
Kate nodded and continued on her way to the kitchen, gesturing for Bex to follow her.
When they got to the kitchen, Bex climbed onto one of the stools, and after Kate had gotten her food out of the oven, she sat beside her.
"So how was school today?"
Bex shrugged again. "It was fine, I guess."
Kate nodded. "Did you learn anything fun?"
"Not really."
Kate gave her daughter a curious look, but Bex wouldn't meet her eyes, so Kate couldn't tell if she was upset or just tired.
They passed the rest of Kate's meal in silence, and just before she finished eating, Rick entered with a girl on each hip.
"I'm going to bed." Bex announced and before Kate could say anything, she had left the kitchen.
"We're going up for bath time." He said.
Kate nodded. "Give me a chance to take care of these, and I'll meet you in the bathroom."
"Don't worry about it." Rick said. "Why don't you go figure out what's bothering Bex?" He added when he saw her confused expression.
"She's just tired, Rick." Kate said as she loaded up the dishwasher.
"She's been like this for the whole week. I'm worried something might be happening at school."
"That was my first thought, but she hasn't said anything,"
"Well, she is your daughter. Sometimes it takes a while to get something out of her. Just give it a shot? I'll take care of bedtime, ok?"
Kate nodded. "Ok. I'll go peel our onion."
Rick laughed and carried the twins out of the room and into the bathroom while Kate head toward her oldest daughter's room.
"Bex?" Kate called as she knocked on the door. "Can I come in, sweetie?"
She heard a muffled response, which she took for a yes and gently pushed the door open.
Bex was sitting with her back against her headboard and her knees drawn up to her chest. She was reading a book, and as Kate approached, Bex refused to lift her eyes to look at her mom.
"Whatcha reading?" Kate asked as she sat down on Bex's right.
"A book the librarian thought I would like." She answered with a shrug.
Kate watched her read for a moment, and it quickly became clear that Bex wasn't really reading. So Kate gently too the book out of her grasp and marked her daughter's place before she closed it and set it on the nightstand.
"What's up, Bex?" Kate asked.
"Nothing." Bex mumbled as she looked down at her knees.
"Rebecca, you know better than to lie to me." Kate said softly as she tucked a piece of Bex's hair behind her ear. "What's going on?"
Bex sighed, but she didn't say anything. Kate didn't push, however, because she could tell that her daughter was trying to find words for her thoughts. Finally, Bex took a deep breath and spoke.
"What did I do?" She asked softly.
"I don't know what you mean, Bex." Kate said.
"What did I do wrong?" Bex asked as she turned to face her mother.
Kate had a hard time catching her breath momentarily when Bex's eyes, so similar to her own- and so filled with sadness- met hers.
"I don't know, Bex. But who said you did something wrong? Was it Daddy?"
"No one said it." Bex murmured. "But I had to have done something wrong, right?"
"I'm really confused, Bex. If no one said you did anything, why do you think you did something wrong? Did Daddy put you in timeout today?"
"Daddy didn't do anything." Bex mumbled as she turned her gaze back to her knees.
"Then why do you think- Oh, Bex." Kate gasped as the realization hit her. "What did I do, Bex?"
"That's the point, you didn't do anything." Bex replied.
"Ok, I'm lost again. If I didn't do anything, why do you think you did something wrong?"
"That's it. You didn't do anything."
"You're gonna need to give me more than that, Bex." Kate murmured. She used her hand to gently turn Bex's face toward her so she could look her daughter in the eye. "I can't fix whatever I did or didn't do if you won't tell me."
"It's stupid." Bex finally said. "It doesn't matter."
"Don't say that, Bex. If something's upset you, then it matters."
Bex sighed again, but she started talking anyway. "Everyday when you got home, the first thing you'd do was hug me. You'd out your gun and badge away, and you'd come find me a give me a hug, always. But then a couple months ago, you stopped. You got home and you went straight to Anna and Maggie and started cuddling and playing with them. And I told myself that it was ok, that you'd hug me later, and you did. You gave me a hug before I went to bed. But tonight was the third night in a row where I've gone to bed, and you didn't give me a hug or anything. And I tried to tell myself that it was ok, that it didn't really matter, that I didn't need a hug, but it's not ok, and I really needed a hug."
Bex paused for a moment, and Kate would have spoken, but she knew her daughter wasn't done, and she knew that it was best to let her say everything she needed to say.
"Was I not enough anymore?" Bex finally asked in a small voice. "Is that why you had Anna and Maggie? Was I not enough for you and Daddy?" Bex asked as she turned to look at Kate again.
Kate reached out and wiped away the few tears that had fallen from her daughter's eyes before she spoke. "Oh, no, Bex. God, no. You were more than enough. You're still more than enough, and you always will be." Kate whispered fiercely as she hugged her daughter.
"Then what did I do? Is it 'cause I'm not as perfect as Alexis? Cause I can be, if I have a little time to work on it. I can be perfect like her. I can be interesting like Anna and Maggie, if that's it." Bex said hopefully as even more tears welled in her eyes. "Whatever I did wrong, I can fix it, Momma, I can."
"Bex, shhh." Kate murmured as she pulled her daughter onto her lap. "Stop talking like that right now, ok?"
"But I mean it. I can change. I can be better, I really can, if that's what you and Daddy want me to do."
"Bex, no. Never. You listen to me very carefully, ok?" Kate asked. Bex nodded slowly and rubbed her eyes to get rid of the tears that had escaped.
"I never want to hear you say something like that again, do you hear me?" Again Bex nodded. "I don't want you comparing yourself to Alexis. Or to Anna and Maggie, for that matter. I never want you to do that. You're not them, ok? You're you, and that's more than enough for everybody that loves you."
"But-" Bex started.
"No." Kate interrupted her. "You are perfect in your own way, just like Alexis is perfect in her way and Anna and Maggie are perfect in theirs, ok? You don't need to be any better than you already are."
"But everyone always says how perfect Alexis is, how she's always doing the right thing. And even Anna and Maggie are more interesting than me, because there's two of them. But I've got nothing. I'm not special, not like them."
"And that's ok. I'm not special like them either. But you've got your own things that make you wonderful, Bex. You're beautiful, smart, kind, and you care more about the people you love than you do about yourself, and that takes a lot to do. You put other peoples' wishes and needs before your own, and that is an impressive thing, and it's something that I have trouble with a lot of the time."
"But what good is all of that? What good is it if I'm boring or not as smart as everyone else?"
"You're not as old as everyone else, so you can't compare yourself to them." Kate said gently.
Bex didn't say anything, and Kate knew she was still having issues believing her. So she slid Bex off her lap and got off the bed.
"Don't worry, I'll be right back. I promise it won't be more than 2 minutes, ok?"
Bex nodded and watched as her mom walked out of the room. Less than two minutes later, Kate returned and she was carrying an old wooden box. She set the box on Bex's bed and got back in her previous position before she pulled the box toward her.
Bex watched as Kate carefully opened the box and pulled out a picture. It was of a little girl, about 9 or 10, and Bex couldn't deny that she was pretty. "Who's that?" She asked.
"That's my mom." Kate answered. She pulled out another photo, this one had a girl looking almost exactly the same, but with slight differences. "And this is me." Kate said with a smile. "When I used to visit my grandmother as a little girl, she'd sometimes call me Johannah. She always told me that I looked just like my mom did when she was my age."
Bex nodded and watched as Kate pulled out one more picture. It was a picture of Bex taken just a few months ago. Kate laid the pictures out on Bex's bed, with Johannah's on the left, Kate's in the middle, and Bex's on the right.
"The first time you opened your eyes, after all the blue had faded, I thought I was looking at my mom again. Even now, there are times where I see you and all I can think of is the wonderful times we had together." Kate put Bex's picture on top of her own, and Bex was able to clearly see the similarities between her and her grandmother.
"You're every perfect thing my mom used to be, and then some. She was just as kind and just as caring, and like you, she would do anything for the people she loved."
Bex just looked up at her mother, unsure of what to say. Kate seemed to know what she was thinking though. "This is what good it is." Kate said. "Just because you don't think anything about yourself is special doesn't mean it's true. You are beyond what I could have ever hoped for in a daughter, Bex."
Bex nodded and lifted up the picture of Johannah. Kate watched her for a moment and couldn't fight the smile that came whenever she thought about all the good times with her mom.
"I want you to have something, Bex. Something my mom would have wanted you to have." Kate murmured.
Bex set the picture down and turned slightly to face her mom. Kate picked up the wooden box and set it in front of Bex with the lid still open.
"It's uh- it's a very pretty box." Bex said, slightly confused.
Kate laughed. "The gift isn't the box. Well, I'm giving you that too, but the box is from my dad's side of the family. This is your gift." Kate said as she reached beneath her shirt and pulled a chain from around her neck. Bex was confused for just a moment before she saw the ring dangling from the chain.
"This was my moms, her mother had given it to her when she was a little girl, and my mom held on to it, even managed to convince my dad to propose to her with it. She gave it to me the day I left for college. It was always meant for the oldest daughter, but since I was an only child, I was going to get it anyway."
"Then shouldn't you give it to Alexis?" Bex asked, confused since a lot of their friends referred to Alexis as Kate's oldest daughter.
Kate just shook her head though. "As much as I love Alexis, she's not my daughter; at least, not in the way you, Anna, and Maggie are. While it can be said that I was more of a mother to Alexis when she needed it than her own mother was, that's not what this is about. You're technically my oldest daughter, which means this is yours." Kate said as she reached out and slipped the chain over Bex's head.
The chain settled and the ring dangled in front of Bex's chest, just as it had done when Kate wore it. "Can I make a proposition?" Kate asked after a moment of silence.
"Sure." Bex replied.
"Well, for starters, everyday when I get home, the first thing I'll do, after putting my badge and gun away, is find you and give you a hug, ok? I can't remember why I stopped, but it won't happen again. And twice a week, after dinner, we'll have Daddy give Anna and Maggie their baths by himself, and the two of us will talk, ok? About anything and everything, no matter how stupid you think it might be. And I'll promise you right now, if you ever do something wrong, I won't get mad at you if you tell me, ok? I can't promise that I won't be upset, but I will do my best not to be mad and not to yell at you, ok?"
Bex nodded and a smile was finally working its way across her face.
"But if you ever need to talk, no matter what it's about, you can always come to me, ok? No matter what happens, I'll always be here for you, alright? But if something's bothering you, you've got to tell me or Daddy. We're not mind readers, not really, and we can't fix something if you don't tell us that it needs to be fixed, understand?"
Bex nodded again and wrapped her arms tightly around Kate's neck. "Thank you." Bex whispered.
Kate pulled away with a smile and after she kissed Bex's head, she stood and headed to the door. Bex tried to give back the pictures, but Kate shook her head. "Keep them, you never know when you might need them."
Bex nodded and watched as her mom walked away. When Kate got to the door, she paused and turned around. "A word of advice? I wouldn't sleep with that on." She said as she gestured to the ring. "It's not very comfortable to lay on."
Bex smiled and slipped the chain from around her neck and set it gently in the box on top of the pictures.
"Momma?" Bex asked suddenly.
"Yeah?"
"I uh- I don't hate Anna or Maggie. Or Alexis. Just thought you should know."
"Believe me, Bex, I know. I never thought you did."
"Ok. Just making sure." Bex replied with a shy smile.
"I love you, Bex." Kate said with a smile.
"I love you too, Momma." Bex replied as she set the box on her nightstand. Kate waited until her daughter was under the covers before she turned out the lights.
Within minutes, Bex was asleep with a smile on her face.
So this one was a bit longer, but I really liked the idea, so I decided to roll with it. This just came to me, and it seemed like something a middle(ish) child might feel.
If you have any ideas for this story, please please please please please let me know and I'll do my best to get them done in a timely manner.
Reviews are wonderful. You should write one. :)