Page 144 of Scars and Crowns

I glance toward the palace before looking back at her. I have spent the morning thinking about how to explain this without making it sound frightening, because she's five and there are some things a child shouldn't have to carry simply because the adults around her are carrying them.

"Your mumma has gone somewhere today to talk about some difficult things." Sara's expression changes at once.

"Is she sad?"

"Maybe a little." I brush a loose strand of hair away from her forehead. "She's talking to someone who helps people when their feelings get too heavy. Someone whose job is to listen and help."

She thinks about that. "Like when you listen to me?"

"Exactly like that. Except this person has made a whole career out of being a very good listener."

"Does Mumma have to tell her everything?"

"Only what she wants to."

Sara seems satisfied by that answer. Then her face brightens. "Can we make her something?"

I smile. "That was exactly what I was hoping you'd say."

We take over the little table in Sara's room a few minutes later. Paper covers half the surface, crayons spill out of an open box, and somehow there is a pair of scissors underneath a stuffed rabbit that neither of us remembers putting there.

Sara sits cross-legged on the chair, completely absorbed in the important work of deciding what colour Mumma's dress should be in the drawing. "Pink?"

"She likes pink."

"Blue?"

"She likes blue too."

"Red?"

"Also red."

Sara looks personally offended by the difficulty of this decision. "Mumma likes too many colours."

"That's one of her problems." She giggles.

I watch her draw the first figure, tongue peeking out slightly from the corner of her mouth as she concentrates. The head is much too large, one arm is considerably longer than the other, and the feet look like two small black commas. “Who is that?"

"Mumma."

"Very accurate."

She ignores me. Then she starts on the second figure. "That's me."

"And this one?"

She looks at me as though the answer should be obvious. "Papa."

The crayon stops moving in my hand. It is such a small thing now. A word. Four letters.

Something she says without hesitation, without looking at me to see whether I'm going to correct her. But I still feel it. That quiet, almost painful warmth spreading beneath my ribs.

There was a time when I wondered whether she would ever call me anything other than Mister. I remember those first weeks so clearly—the careful distance, the curiosity, the little glances she used to sneak at me when she thought I wasn't looking.

And now I'm simply Papa. Not because anyone told her she had to call me that. Not because I asked. She decided. I clear my throat and look back down at the paper before she notices what her one little word has done to me. "Should Papa have a moustache?"

She considers me seriously. "No."