Sunny
She stared at the ceiling, memorizing details she’d soon leave behind: the crown molding that framed the edges, the water stain from when Hailey had overflowed the top-floor bathtub, the way morning light would soon filter through the gauzy curtains.
The house was silent except for the grandfather clock downstairs — each tick counting down the time she had left in this home, with this family. Her family. No, she corrected herself. Not her family. Never truly hers.
In the bathroom, she avoided her reflection.
She knew what she’d see — red-rimmed eyes, pallor beneath her normally rosy complexion, the physical manifestation of a heart breaking.
Instead, she focused on the practical: brushing her teeth, washing her face, tying back her hair.
Normal morning routine. As if this were any normal morning.
She pulled herself back from the memories. Focus on the task at hand.
The refrigerator yielded eggs, milk, fresh blueberries. From the pantry, she retrieved flour, sugar, vanilla. The girls’ favorite — blueberry pancakes with smiley faces made of sliced strawberries. A last meal, of sorts. A final act of care.
As she mixed the batter, muscle memory taking over where conscious thought failed, Sunny struggled to rehearse what she would say.
I have to go away for a while.
No. Too vague. Too much like the hollow promises adults had made to her as a child.
Your daddy thinks it’s best if I leave.
Worse. Shifting responsibility, making it Liam’s decision, when she should own this herself.
I love you both so much, but sometimes adults have to make hard choices.
The wooden spoon stilled in the bowl as hot tears threatened. There was no good way to tell children you were leaving them. No words that could soften the blow, no explanation that could make sense of abandonment to a child’s heart.
She’d known that once, felt it herself with each new foster home, each failed placement. The confusion. The hurt. The inevitable conclusion that somehow, some way, it must be your fault. You weren’t good enough. Lovable enough. Worth staying for.
And now she would inflict that same wound on Maddie and Hailey.
The first pancake sizzled on the griddle, the familiar smell filling the kitchen with warmth and sweetness.
Sunny arranged fresh berries into smiling faces, her vision blurring with unshed tears.
Last night, she’d tucked special notes into their lunch boxes — simple messages of love and encouragement they would find later, after she was gone.
Small comfort, but all she had to offer.
“Sunny?”
Hailey’s voice, still thick with sleep, startled her from her thoughts. She stood in the doorway, wild blonde curls tangled around her face, clutching her stuffed rabbit by one well-loved ear.
“Good morning, sweetie,” Sunny managed, her voice unnaturally bright. “I made your favorite pancakes.”
Hailey rubbed her eyes with small fists, then tilted her head, studying Sunny with that uncanny perception children sometimes possess. “You look different.”
“Do I?” Sunny turned back to the stove, flipping a pancake with unnecessary concentration. “Maybe I’m just tired.”
“No,” Hailey insisted, padding across the kitchen tiles. “You look sad. Like when Daddy watches the videos of Mommy.”
The comparison was like a hot poker between Sunny’s ribs. She swallowed hard, forcing a smile as she bent to Hailey’s level.
“Why don’t you go wake your sister?” she suggested. “Breakfast is almost ready.”
Hailey hesitated, unconvinced, but then nodded and scampered away. Sunny exhaled shakily, pressing her palms against the cool countertop for support. She’d barely begun, and already her resolve was crumbling. How would she get through the actual goodbye?
By the time both girls arrived at the table, Sunny had arranged stacks of pancakes on three plates, complete with berry smiley faces and small pitchers of warm maple syrup. She busied herself pouring juice, avoiding their curious gazes.
“Where’s Daddy?” Maddie asked, still in her pajamas but with her hair neatly brushed. Always the more put-together of the two.
“In his office,” Sunny replied. “He has an early call with the team.”
Another half-truth. Liam was indeed in his office, had barely emerged since their conversation yesterday. Whether he was actually working or simply avoiding the inevitable fallout, she couldn’t say.
Maddie narrowed her eyes, more perceptive than her years warranted. “Why are you acting weird, Sunny?”
The directness of the question caught Sunny off guard. She’d planned to ease into it, wait until they’d eaten at least. But Maddie’s probing gaze left no room for delays.
Sunny set down the juice pitcher and took a deep breath.
“Girls, I need to tell you something important,” she began, her prepared speech evaporating as those two pairs of innocent eyes fixed on her. “Could you sit down, please?”
Hailey scrambled into her usual chair, immediately reaching for her juice. Maddie moved more cautiously, as if sensing the gravity of the moment.
“Is this about what Jamie’s mom said?” Maddie asked, her voice small. “That you’re going to leave?”
The question stole Sunny’s breath. Children absorbed everything, particularly the painful things adults tried to shield them from.
“I…” Sunny faltered, her knuckles white where she gripped the back of a chair. “Sometimes, grown-ups have to make very difficult decisions. Even when they don’t want to.”
Hailey’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What kind of decisions?”
Sunny’s heart pounded painfully against her ribs. Her hands trembled, and she pressed them flat against the table to hide it.
“I have to go away,” she said finally, the words scraping her throat like broken glass. “Today.”
The silence that followed stretched between them, fragile and dangerous. Hailey’s expression remained puzzled, as if the words didn’t quite translate. But Maddie — Maddie understood immediately, her small face draining of color.
“For how long?” Hailey asked, innocently.
Before Sunny could answer, Maddie stood abruptly, knocking over her juice glass. Orange liquid spread across the white tablecloth like a slow-motion disaster, but no one moved to clean it up.
“Please don’t leave us too,” Maddie whispered, her blue eyes — so like her father’s — swimming with tears. “Everybody leaves us.”
The simple truth of it, delivered with a child’s devastating clarity, broke something fundamental inside Sunny.
She’d seen Maddie suffer the loss of her mother, watched her struggle to adapt to a world that kept shifting beneath her small feet.
And now Sunny would be another adult walking out the door, another reason for Maddie to believe that love wasn’t permanent, that people couldn’t be trusted to stay.
“Sweetie,” Sunny began, taking a step toward her, but Maddie recoiled.
In that moment, Hailey seemed to fully grasp what was happening. With a wail of distress, she launched herself from her chair and wrapped herself around Sunny’s legs like a vise, her small body trembling with sobs.
“No, no, no!” Hailey cried, her face pressed against Sunny’s jeans, tears and snot immediately soaking through the fabric. “You can’t go away! You can’t!”
Sunny’s composure crumbled entirely. She dropped to her knees, gathering Hailey into her arms, feeling the child’s heart racing against her own.
“I don’t want to go,” she admitted, voice breaking. “But sometimes… sometimes adults have to do things that are very hard because they’re what’s best.”
“Best for who?” Maddie demanded, suddenly fierce through her tears. “Not for us!”
Sunny looked up at her, struggling to find words that wouldn’t be platitudes, that might somehow make sense of a situation that made no sense at all.
“Is it because of me?” Hailey asked between hiccupping sobs. “Because I broke the picture frame last week? I said I was sorry!”
“No! No, sweetie, it’s nothing you did,” Sunny said quickly, pulling back to look into Hailey’s tear-stained face. “Neither of you did anything wrong. This is… this is grown-up stuff. Things that have nothing to do with how much I love you.”
“Then don’t go,” Maddie said simply, as if it were that easy. As if love were enough to overcome everything else.
And oh, how Sunny wished it were.
“You promised,” Maddie continued, her voice dropping to an accusatory whisper. “You said you wouldn’t leave.”
The memory of that conversation stabbed through Sunny like a physical pain — Maddie asking if the rumors were true, if Sunny was going to leave like all the other nannies Jamie’s mom knew. Sunny’s carefully worded non-answer, her promise to talk about it later.
Later was now, and she had no good answers.
“I know,” Sunny acknowledged, not attempting to defend the indefensible. “I’m so sorry, Maddie.”
Maddie’s expression hardened, Kate’s determination flashing across her features. Without another word, she turned and ran from the room, her small feet pounding down the hall.
“Maddie!” Sunny called after her, instinctively rising to follow, but Hailey’s grip tightened, small fingers digging into Sunny’s clothes with desperate strength.
“Don’t go,” Hailey begged, her words muffled against Sunny’s stomach. “Please don’t go. I’ll be good. I’ll clean my room every day. I’ll eat all my vegetables. I promise!”
Sunny’s throat closed with anguish as she knelt again, trying gently to disentangle herself from Hailey’s grip. “Sweetie, you are good. You’re perfect just the way you are. This isn’t about anything you did or didn’t do.”
But Hailey only clung tighter, as if by sheer physical force she could prevent what was happening. Her small body shook with the force of her sobs, her face red and blotchy with distress.
Unbidden, a memory surfaced from Sunny’s own childhood — herself at seven, clinging to her foster mother’s skirt as the woman tried to explain Sunny was going back now that her “real baby” had been born.
The hollow platitudes, the gentle but firm removal of Sunny’s desperate hands, the way the woman wouldn’t meet her eyes as she walked out the door.
Now Sunny was on the other side of that scene, inflicting the very trauma she had sworn never to cause.
A soft creak of floorboards alerted her to another presence. Sunny looked up to see Liam standing in the doorway, drawn by the commotion. He took in the scene before him — abandoned breakfast, spilled juice, Hailey wrapped around Sunny’s legs, both of them on the floor in tears.
For a fleeting moment, their eyes met across the room. Sunny saw something flicker in his gaze — doubt, pain, shame, maybe even the desire to stop this — before his expression shuttered again. He remained frozen in the doorway, hands at his sides, neither retreating nor approaching.
His silence was its own form of confirmation. This was happening. He wouldn’t intervene. A small noise from the hallway drew their attention.