Chapter 6
— What Dolores Heard
After Poppy fell asleep in my arms, I carried her upstairs to her room and laid her gently on her bed, and I pulled the blanket up to her chin, and I sat beside her until her breathing was slow and even. The room was quiet, and the afternoon light came through the window in a soft gold, and I looked at her small face on the pillow, at the short hair that framed it, and I felt the anger rise in me again, and I pushed it down, because anger was not what she needed. She needed her father to be steady. She needed to wake up in a house where she was safe.
I went downstairs and found Dolores in the kitchen, sitting at the table with her hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had gone cold. She looked up when I came in, and her eyes were red, and she did not try to hide it.
"Beau," she said, "I need to tell you what Poppy told me."
I sat down across from her. "Tell me."
Dolores took a slow breath. "When you carried her into the living room, she asked for me. She said she wanted to tell me something, and she asked me not to tell Veronica. So I sat with her, and I held her hand, and I told her she could tell me anything."
She paused, and her hands tightened around the cup. "She said Veronica took her upstairs and sat her down in front of the mirror, and she told her that her curls were ugly, and that no one would love a girl with messy hair, and that she was fixing her so her father would be proud. She said Veronica told her not to cry, and not to make a sound, and that if she was good, her daddy would love her more."
I listened, and I did not speak, because I was afraid that if I spoke, my voice would break. Dolores went on, and her voice was steady, but her hands were shaking.
"She said she tried to be brave. She said she sat very still, and she did not cry, because she wanted her daddy to be proud. She said she believed Veronica, because Veronica was going to be her new mama, and new mamas were supposed to know what was best. She said she only started crying when she saw herself in the mirror afterward, and she saw that her curls were gone."
Dolores looked at me, and her eyes were full of tears. "Beau, that child sat still while a woman told her she was not good enough. She sat still because she thought it would make you love her. Do you understand what that means? She thought your love had to be earned, and that her hair was the price."
I put my head in my hands. I had spent two years telling Poppy that she was loved exactly as she was, and in one afternoon, in one quiet room upstairs, Veronica had undone it. She had planted a seed in my daughter's mind, a seed that said love came with conditions, and that a little girl had to be fixed before she could be loved. I thought about the months Veronica had spent in our house, about the small remarks and the smooth voice and the way she had always seemed to know exactly what to say, and I saw it all differently now. The remarks about the hair had not been careless. They had been a plan.
"Did she say anything else?" I asked.
"She said Veronica told her not to tell you," Dolores said. "She said Veronica told her that if she told her daddy, her daddy would be angry with her, not with Veronica. She said she was afraid to tell you, Beau. She was afraid you would be angry."
I stood up from the table, and I walked to the window, and I looked out at the garden, at the big tree at the far end of the lawn, and I thought about my daughter sitting under that tree the evening before, asking me to tell her about it, her curls bouncing around her face. I thought about Meredith, and about what she would have said if she had been here, and I knew what she would have said. She would have said that no one, no one in this world, gets to tell a child that she is not enough.
"Thank you for telling me," I said to Dolores, and my voice was steady now, because I had made a decision. "Poppy did nothing wrong. She was brave, and she told the truth, and I am proud of her. Now I need you to stay with her tonight, and to keep her close, and to tell her, as many times as she needs to hear it, that her daddy loves her exactly as she is."
Dolores nodded, and she wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron, and she said, "I will, Beau. I will stay with her all night if I have to. That child will not be alone."
I left the kitchen and went to find Veronica. The house was quiet, and the evening was coming on, and the light through the windows had turned the color of old gold. I walked up the stairs, one step at a time, and with every step I felt calmer, because I knew exactly what I was going to say, and I knew that nothing she could say would change it.