Chapter Twelve
Melissa
January 7, 2025, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
It’d been a week since Dante showed up at my office late at night and asked me to keep Dani safe. Every evening at nine on the dot, he sent a coded text letting me know he was alive, and I sent him back a coded text letting him know Dani was safe.
I had successfully transferred my younger patients to another doctor I trusted. I didn’t expect those patients to return. To be honest, I didn’t expect to continue my practice much longer.
I was still working with my older patients that were able to accommodate online sessions. But even a few of them had opted for a referral. The parents and the patients were disappointed in my decision, and I understood their feelings.
But Dani was my priority now.
There were other psychologists and therapists that were competent enough to help those who chose to leave.
Dani had no one but me.
If what Dante said was true, she had a woman named Ellery Thomas. Someone Dante trusted to love and care for his child in the event he no longer could.
The trouble was, I didn’t know this woman. I didn’t know if she was trustworthy to raise a child. Dante had shared a little about her during Dani’s sessions. Ellie had taken on and adopted her husband’s two little girls, and while I found that commendable, they weren’t Dani.
At this point in her life, Dani had spent more time with me than she had this Ellie woman. She had spent more time with me than even her fathers. It was my job to consider what was best for Dani, and I wasn’t convinced that growing up surrounded by bikers was in her best interest.
If her fathers came home and claimed her, I would have no choice but to relinquish her over to their care. But until that time, she had been left in mine. My opinion was the one that mattered now.
Don’t get attached!
Too fucking late for that. We spent most of our days in my office. My home was not set up for a child. It was fine for dinner time and sleeping. I had brought a few of Dani’s favorite items home for her to play with before bed. But during the day when I had online sessions, it was better for her to have the play areas to keep her busy. With her continued silence, none of my patients were aware there was a child in the room while they spoke with me.
Unethical? Maybe. But Dani couldn’t talk, so there was no concern about her repeating anything she might hear. Which wasn’t anything when I wore my earbuds. The reality was that desperate times called for desperate measures. There was no one else I could trust to take care of Dani while I worked.
I kept the sessions limited to before lunch and right after. Dani played in the morning, and after lunch she took a nap on the couch. By the time she woke from her nap, my limited sessions were done for the day, and Dani and I spent the afternoons filled with trips to the zoo, the park, the botanical gardens, and museums.
Dani was being immersed in learning about cultures she’d never been able to before, and it was a joy to see things adults often took for granted through the eyes of a child experiencing it for the first time.
In the evenings, we made dinner together. Dani helped with things like cracking eggs and tearing lettuce for a salad. She giggled and laughed while I talked to her about Dante and how much he loved her.
I knew I should talk about Danny as well, but I was angry at him. I was angry at the way he walked away, and I was angry at the choices he made that caused Dante to walk away.
Despite that, I recorded videos of new things Dani experienced because I wanted them both to have a record and be able to see her enjoy the new adventures we took daily.
In my heart, I knew they both loved her with everything they had. Sadly, I was more than aware of the misguided notion men had, that told them sacrificing themselves for someone else was noble.
Of course it was noble. But nobility was a crock of shit to a little girl who just wanted her family.
Dani had been doing so well; I was afraid her progress would backslide now that both Danny and Dante were gone from her life. She wouldn’t understand why they left. She didn’t understand that they were likely doing whatever they could to make it back to her safely.
All she knew was she had two dads and now she didn’t.
This little girl’s family had been ripped away from her so many times, I was concerned she would never learn to form attachments.
Putting Dani to bed each night consisted of bath time, two cookies, and four stories before she would settle in and lay down. I didn’t mind though. I was proud of the way she had learned to ask for what she wanted despite not being able to voice those wants out loud.
Dani and I had also been learning sign language together. We watched YouTube videos after dinner, and she now had a way to communicate some basic needs like when she wanted a snack or a drink.
After putting her to bed every night, I laid in my bed and cried.
I cried for Dani and everything that had happened to her in the short two years she had been on this Earth. I cried for her mother. Dante hadn’t said whether or not she had been able to hold Dani, or if she had even laid eyes on her. I cried for what both she and Dante had endured at the hands of the bitch who’d held them both captive. Forcing a man to hurt a child in that way was beyond the scope of a sociopath. The woman could only be classified as a psychopath.
Someone who got off on causing pain to others.
I even cried for Danny.
I knew he loved Dante with everything in him. A love he learned by watching his parents open their hearts to others. But now that I knew he was in a motorcycle club, my own prejudices ruled out over what I had learned about the young man.
I prayed that whatever Danny and Dante had gotten mixed up in, they would find a way to end the life of the woman who had caused so much damage. That was no less than she deserved. She didn’t deserve to live in a cell, having her basic needs met. Being able to socialize with other inmates.
No, she deserved to die.
I wasn’t stupid. Dante and Dani’s mother were not her only victims. I knew Dr. Scott had been a victim, as well as Dante’s brother Silas and the other three teenagers that had escaped with them, and I imagined there were countless others. The Trick Pony was an institution that had been around since at least the seventies, maybe longer.
What I didn’t understand was how so many people had stood by, knowing what was happening there, and let it continue as long as it did.
We lived in a world where people wore blinders. So many believed that if it wasn’t happening to them, it wasn’t happening at all.
All over the world, men, women, and children disappeared every day, never to be heard from again. Yet still people believed it wasn’t happening because they didn’t have any anecdotal evidence. Because they didn’t know someone it had happened to, then it must be fake news, or a conspiracy theory.
The statistics were staggering, yet not enough was done to protect the people living on this Earth. We all just wanted to live our lives in peace, and we should be able to. That was an inherent right as a human being—to be able to live our lives without fear or pain.
Unfortunately, there were many evil people living in this world with us. People who found joy in hurting others. People whose only goal in life was to hurt and control as many as they could.
Every night when Dani woke from a nightmare, I was thankful that I was the only one here to stand over her bed and watch her. If there was one thing in this life I would do, it would be to make sure this little girl never felt the fear of waking up being touched and assaulted.
She would never know the shame of having grown men and women do things to her that she couldn’t stop. Things that should never be done to a child. Or any person against their will.
As she stirred in her crib, I leaned down and gathered her in my arms. I held her gently as I sat in the rocking chair I purchased after the first day. Night after night, I rocked this little girl and comforted her fears and her loneliness caused by the absence of her fathers.
And night after night, I struggled with my own sense of abandonment and loss as I tried to steel myself against the attachment that was growing for this little girl.
Laying her back in her crib after she settled down, I sat on the couch with my head laid back. Baby monitor in my hand, I tried to sleep until she woke again.
Three strikes were all I allowed.
The third time she woke, I brought her to bed with me. We both needed the rest. Studies had shown that children who slept with their parents had better emotional regulation and lower anxiety levels compared to those who slept alone.
Other studies had proved that children who co-slept were more self-reliant and displayed more social independence as toddlers. Co-sleeping also contributed to stronger bonds formed between parents and their children.
For a little girl who was sorely neglected and never allowed to form an attachment to anyone for the first two years of her life, I was a proponent of co-sleeping. I understood the benefits a child like Dani could reap from co-sleeping. There was only one problem.
I wasn’t her mother.
I understood why Danny and Dante set things up the way they did. And if I needed to disappear with Dani, I would gladly take up that role and fulfill it with everything in me.
What worried me was what would happen to both Dani and me if her parents eventually came back. How could I let go of the little girl that had become so important in my life?
How would Dani adjust to having yet another parental figure ripped away from her?
I didn’t have answers to any of those questions, but they plagued me day and night. With every new word Dani learned to sign. With every new experience we shared together, we were building memories that would stay with me forever but might fade away from her to the point that she would never remember who I was or what she came to mean to me.
She would never know there was someone out there always on her side. Someone she could turn to who would never willingly leave her behind. Someone who loved her the way her mother would, had she been given the chance.
Dani stirred again and I rushed to her room. I wanted her to know that someone was there when she needed them. I lifted her from her crib and settled into the rocker again.
I softly sang as Dani rested her head against my shoulder. I reminded myself again that Dani wasn’t mine. That her fathers would return for her, and I needed to do my best to create a routine they could fuse into seamlessly with her.
As I listened to her cries lessen, and her breathing even out, I thought to myself, one more time I would put her down alone. One more time she would wake frightened. Then I would bring her to my bed and we would both get the rest we desperately needed.