The Things We Water

Once upon a December, in the middle of the most magical forest in North America, three women stood shoulder to shoulder under a brilliant full moon.

Each watched a small home surrounded by towering pines.

Through the smallest of the home’s windows, a blonde girl stood in her room, holding a cell phone to her face as she told her friend on the other line, “I need to go. My mom needs me.”

Three much bigger windows gave a clear view of a living area. In it was a tall, muscular man with his arm over the shoulders of a dark-haired woman plastered to his side. Her belly round in the way that only someone in her last trimester could be.

Across from them, on the floor, sat three other figures. A slim dark-haired boy and two much older white-haired men, holding Lego pieces up to the fan above their heads. On the couch beside them was a man with salt-and-pepper hair, one leg crossed over the other. A toddler sat on his right, drinking from a sippy cup, watching the group on the floor, and a slightly older child stood on the man’s other side, sticking a small finger in his ear.

The shortest of the three women made a soft sound in her throat as she watched the big man stroke his wife’s back with a loving hand. “They look happy,” she claimed in a wistful tone.noveldrama

“They smell happy,” the tallest added in a monotone voice, though her brown eyes remained glued to the three males on the floor laughing.

The third one huffed. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to yourselves. They’ll never know what you did.”

Neither of the two women tore their gazes away from the windows and the people inside, but the shortest woman made a delicate gesture with her body. “They don’t need to,” she replied, her head held high, her bronze skin burnished under the moonlight. “It’s a burden we take on as mothers. To do what’s necessary, even at our expense.”

Another huff left the third woman’s chest as she shook her head, but she wasn’t fooling the others.

A mother was always a mother, no matter how old their child got.

And on that Christmas night, the Night, the Moon, and the Hound stood in the trees and watched an ancient uncle, two older brothers, a father and a husband, a mother and a wife, two sons, and two daughters rejoice in the love of the family they had built, never knowing of the audience that stood in the tree line.

Never knowing that it wasn’t the universe or Fate that brought them all together, but a series of regrets and a strong sense of atonement that led to this moment in time.

And more than anything else, an incredible amount of love.