Don't Ask Me Home Again

Ava's POV

Mommy didn't try to make me stand up.

She sat right down on the floor by the window with me in her lap, rain still dripping off her hair, and pulled her big wool coat open so she could wrap it around both of us. It was heavy and warm on the inside. Bramble got squished between us, and she let him.

Then she picked up my hand and turned it over.

Her thumb moved slowly across my palm, all red and puffy, and then down to my knees, where the moon pajamas had worn through.

"Did you fall, bug?"

"No." I pressed my cheek against her sweater. "Last night I was hungry. So I crawled to the dining room."

Her thumb stopped moving.

I looked up fast, because I knew what it meant when a grown-up's face went still like that. "I'm sorry I made a mess."

"What mess, baby?"

"I crawled on the carpet. The white one. It got pink stuff on it." The words tumbled out. "I didn't do it on purpose. I wasn't trying to make Daddy mad."

Mommy closed her eyes for a second. When she opened them, they were wet, but her voice came out steady.

"You have nothing to apologize for. Listen to me. Messy floor, clean floor, it doesn't matter. You always get to eat. Always."

She kissed my forehead, then pulled her phone out of her coat pocket with one hand, still holding me with the other.

"Hi, this is Amelia Hart. I need Dr. Patel, please. It's about Ava." A pause. "Yes, I'll hold."

I listened while she told the doctor about my knees and my hands and how long I'd been on the floor. She asked how to lift me so my hips wouldn't hurt and whether the scrapes needed to be looked at today.

"Today," she repeated. "Okay. We'll be there."

---

Mommy carried me down the hallway the way the doctor said, one arm under my knees, the other tight around my back.

Daddy and Vanessa were in the living room drinking coffee. Chloe was on the rug watching cartoons. Daddy had his mug halfway to his mouth when he saw us, and he set it down on the saucer with a little clink.

"Amelia. You could've called first."

"I did call. Many times." Mommy didn't sit down. "Why doesn't Ava have her wheelchair?"

Daddy gave a little laugh, like she'd told a joke. "Relax. Chloe borrowed it for a while. We're getting it cleaned."

Mommy walked straight past him to the glass doors. She shifted me onto her hip and slid one open. Cold air rushed in, and so did the smell of wet grass.

Out on the lawn, my chair sat in the brown puddle. Water ran off the armrests in slow drops. The last pink butterfly on the side had come up at one corner, flapping a little in the wind.

"That's the cleaning?" Mommy said.

Daddy's smile got smaller. "It rained. Nobody planned that."

"You took away her mobility aid?"

"Chloe wanted to play with it." He picked his coffee back up. "It's not a crime to share."

"You made a five-year-old crawl to dinner."

Vanessa crossed her legs and sighed. "Honestly, Amelia, she's perfectly capable of crawling. She does it whenever she wants attention. You baby her, and so did Grant, and now she can't do anything for herself."

Mommy turned around slowly.

"Then you've just admitted you knew she couldn't walk to the table."

Vanessa opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Mommy was already dialing again. "It's Amelia. I need a pediatric backup chair delivered to my daughter's location within the hour. Seat width twelve, lavender if you have it, and send a tech to fit her. I also want her current chair picked up and inspected for water damage. Motor, cushion, frame. Everything."

She hung up and looked at Daddy.

"That wasn't a toy you could hand out to whoever asked. That's the thing she uses every single day to get to her food, her bathroom, and her bed. You knew that better than anyone."

---

When Mommy said we were going to the doctor, Daddy stood up and walked to the front hall. He stopped right in the doorway, next to Mommy's tipped-over suitcase, and folded his arms.

"She's not going anywhere. I'm the parent who's actually here."

"Then why is our daughter injured and without her wheelchair?"

"Kids get scrapes."

I felt Mommy's fingers squeeze her phone so hard her knuckles went white. But when she talked, she sounded calmer than before, which was scarier.

"We share legal custody, Grant. I have every right to make sure she's healthy and safe. Move."

"You don't get to fly in once a year and lecture me." His face went red. "You left. You're off in another country doing your little job. You design chairs for a living. That doesn't make you an expert on parenting."

He pulled his phone out and held it up so she could see the screen. A gold invitation with fancy letters.

"Bright Steps Charity Gala. Next Saturday. I'm the keynote speaker. Half the city's going to be in that room listening to how I raise a disabled daughter on my own. That's what people think of me."

On the hall table beside him was a stack of shiny booklets. On the cover was me, sitting in my lavender chair in a yellow dress, with Daddy kneeling next to me, both of us smiling.

I remembered that day. The man with the camera kept saying *bigger smile, sweetheart*, and Daddy bought me a cupcake after. That was the last time he pushed my chair to the park.

Mommy looked at the booklet for a long moment.

"And posing beside a wheelchair doesn't make you a good father."

---

The doorbell rang forty minutes later.

A man in a navy jacket rolled in a small lavender wheelchair and knelt down in front of it with a toolbox. He measured my legs and moved the footrest and raised the armrest a tiny bit, the same way Mommy had done with my old one. On the back of the seat was a silver star logo with the word *Northstar* underneath.

Mommy set me into it gently. It fit just right. She tucked a soft gray blanket over my knees, and the man showed me where my call button was clipped.

I could move again. I rolled forward a little, just to check, and my eyes got hot.

Then I looked at Daddy, still in the doorway, and grabbed Mommy's sleeve.

"Is Daddy going to let me go?"

Mommy crouched down so we were eye level. "I'm doing this the right way, with doctors and lawyers. And I promise you, I'm not leaving you alone again. Not ever."

She stood and pushed my chair toward the door.

Daddy didn't move. He smiled, but it was a mean smile.

"You might want to think about what you're starting. Bright Steps is about to close a huge partnership with Northstar Mobility. Nobody's going to blow up a deal that size over your feelings."

Mommy stopped.

She took out her dark phone, pressed a name, and put it on speaker.

"Good morning, Chairwoman Hart," a man answered. "What can I do for you?"

"Pull up the Bright Steps partnership. I want to know who signed off on it and whether it includes any spokesperson contracts."

"One moment." Keys clicked. "Yes, ma'am. It includes a spokesperson agreement with a Grant Reed as the featured family."

Daddy's smile slid off his face.

"Northstar Mobility is sponsoring my foundation," he said. "You can't touch that."

"You still don't know who owns Northstar, do you?"

"What are you talking about?"

Mommy reached into her coat and held up a card on a lanyard. The same silver star. Her picture. Her name.

"I founded it, Grant. And I still control it."

"That's impossible."

"What's impossible is that you took my daughter's wheelchair and expected me to keep funding your perfect-father performance."

Daddy's phone buzzed in his hand.

I was close enough to read the screen.

*Northstar Mobility: Partnership Review Notice*

The gold invitation slipped off the top of the screen as he stared, and his phone dipped in his fingers. Daddy looked at Mommy, and for the first time ever, he didn't say anything at all.

Mommy reached down and took my hand.

"Come on, sweetheart. We're getting you somewhere safe."