Chapter 2 #2
That phrase was something Harbor House used often. Wherever feels comfortable. Not where you’re told. Not where you’re allowed. Not where someone else decides. The words were small, but small choices mattered to people who had spent too long without any.
Maribel eventually sat near the window.
Another woman followed.
Then another.
By the time breakfast was ready, the kitchen had become what I loved most about this place: wounded people gathering around ordinary food as if ordinary might one day become possible again.
Charlie insisted on carrying napkins to the table, though she became distracted halfway through and began explaining Mr. Pickles’s military history to an elderly veteran named Mr. Dawson, who had apparently survived the chest pain scare well enough to sit with oxygen tubing beneath his nose and argue that pancakes were medicinal.
“They are not medicinal,” Daisy told him.
Mr. Dawson lifted his fork.
“Sugar improves morale.”
“That is not medical advice.”
“Remedy isn’t here to contradict me.”
Charlie leaned toward him with wide eyes.
“My daddy knows everything about medicine.”
Mr. Dawson’s expression softened.
“That he does, little miss.”
Pride lit Charlie’s face so brightly it made my chest ache.
“My daddy fixes everybody.”
I turned away under the pretense of reaching for another plate because the simple certainty in Charlie's voice made my chest tighten.
As far as she was concerned, her father really did fix everyone.
Watching the way people relaxed whenever Remedy walked into a room, it was difficult to believe she was wrong.
I had seen it in the way the women spoke his name, not with the nervous caution many of them used for men, but with relief.
Remedy was safe because he never took more space than he needed.
He asked before touching. He explained everything.
He made pain less frightening by treating people as though they still owned their bodies, even after others had tried to convince them otherwise.
But the man who had carried Charlie into this kitchen looked exhausted in a way stitches and bandages couldn’t mend.
The question settled quietly into the back of my mind before I could stop it.
Everyone seemed to depend on Remedy, yet I couldn't remember seeing anyone ask whether he was carrying too much himself.
The realization lingered with me far longer than it should have.
I had spent enough time around Harbor House to recognize exhaustion when I saw it, and Remedy wore it the way some people wore favorite jackets—so often that they forgot it was there.
Everyone seemed to depend on him. I found myself wondering, not for the first time that morning, who he depended on when there was no one left to carry the weight.
The thought unsettled me enough that I busied myself with plates until a small tug came at the hem of my sweatshirt.
Charlie stood beside me, holding one slightly misshapen pancake on a napkin.
“This one is for you.”
It leaned to one side, the center was still a little pale, and one edge had folded over where it had clearly been flipped before it was ready. It was wonderfully imperfect in every possible way.
“It was supposed to be a sun.”
I smiled.
“I can see it.”
“No, you can’t.”
I laughed, and for a moment the sound surprised me.
Charlie grinned as though she had won something.
“You laugh pretty.”
Compliments had always made me uneasy. Inside the Order, kind words were often followed by expectations, conditions, or consequences. Genuine affection without a price attached still felt unfamiliar enough that my first instinct was to search for the hidden cost, even when I knew there wasn't one.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
She studied my face with the unnerving honesty only children possessed.
“Why do your eyes get sad when your mouth smiles?”
Daisy went still across the kitchen.
So, did I.
The room continued moving around us, forks scraping plates, quiet voices murmuring, coffee pouring, but for one breath all I could hear was the echo of another child years ago asking me almost the same thing in a narrow room where the windows did not open.
Why do you smile when you’re scared, Sunny?
Charlie waited for an answer.
I crouched slowly so we were closer to the same height.
“Sometimes people can feel two things at once,” I told her carefully. “They can be happy and sad at the same time.”
She frowned.
“That’s confusing.”
“It is.”
“Are you sad now?”
I glanced at Daisy, then back at Charlie.
“A little.”
“Because of pancakes?”
A real smile touched my mouth.
“No, sweetheart. Not because of pancakes.”
She nodded as though accepting this and then pressed the pancake into my hand.
“Then this will help.”
I held it like it was something precious.
Maybe it was.
“Thank you, Charlie.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then she skipped back toward Mr. Dawson, completely unaware that, in the effortless way only children seemed capable of, she had reached straight through years of carefully built walls and touched a part of my heart I had convinced myself no longer existed.
By late morning, Daisy took Charlie to daycare, though Charlie insisted on hugging me goodbye first. She wrapped her arms around my waist, pressed her cheek to my stomach, and announced that I had to tell Mr. Pickles if any more pancakes happened while she was gone.
I promised I would, and Daisy gave me one last unreadable look before guiding Charlie out the door.
The kitchen felt noticeably quieter after Charlie left with Daisy.
It wasn't empty—the volunteers still moved between the counters, coffee still brewed, and dishes still clinked together—but something bright had gone with her.
Charlie possessed the rare ability to leave behind an absence that felt almost tangible, as though laughter itself lingered for several minutes before reluctantly following her out the door.
For a few moments, I simply stood there with the dish towel still folded in my hands, listening to the silence Charlie always left behind.
It wasn't really silence.
Harbor House was never truly quiet.
Somewhere upstairs a washing machine hummed steadily through another load of donated clothing.
A vacuum cleaner started down the west hallway before quickly stopping when someone remembered half the women upstairs were still trying to sleep after another difficult night.
Outside, laughter drifted through an open window as several volunteers unloaded boxes from the food pantry delivery truck.
Around me, Harbor House continued moving through another ordinary morning.
The washing machines hummed, volunteers laughed outside as they unloaded donations, and someone upstairs gently soothed a frightened child back to sleep.
Life had an extraordinary way of continuing, even after people became convinced it never could.
I hung the towel over the edge of the sink before making my usual morning rounds.
My first stop was the pantry, where shelves that had looked nearly empty the afternoon before now overflowed with canned vegetables, cereal, pasta, peanut butter, baby formula, diapers, and enough pancake mix to satisfy Charlie's enthusiastic belief that pancakes belonged at nearly every meal.
Every donation represented someone choosing kindness for people they might never meet, and somehow that quiet generosity never stopped amazing me.
Every item had been donated by people who would probably never meet the women whose lives they quietly changed.
I straightened a crooked row of soup cans before moving on.
The laundry room came next.
Three industrial washers churned steadily while freshly folded towels filled rolling carts waiting to be delivered upstairs. Evelyn looked up from folding children's pajamas and smiled warmly.
"Morning, Sunshine."
"Morning."
"Your little helper leave already?"
I couldn't help smiling.
"About ten minutes ago."
Evelyn chuckled.
"House already feels too quiet."
She folded another tiny pair of socks with the same careful hands she used for everything in Harbor House. Evelyn had never married or raised children of her own, yet somehow every frightened child who walked through these doors eventually decided she belonged to them anyway.
"It does."
She folded another tiny T-shirt.
"I think she leaves pieces of herself everywhere she goes."
My thoughts drifted back to the flour still dusting the kitchen floor, the teddy bear patiently supervising breakfast from one of the dining chairs, and the slightly misshapen pancake tucked carefully into the pocket of my sweatshirt.
Charlie really did seem to leave pieces of herself everywhere she went, not because she intended to, but because she loved people without ever measuring how much of her heart she gave away. "I think you're right."
From there I continued toward the children's wing.
Bright murals covered the hallway walls.
Colorful fish.
Jungle animals.
Rainbows stretching across blue skies.
Every painting had been created by one of the women who now called Harbor House home. None of them had considered themselves artists before arriving.
Healing had a funny way of uncovering gifts people forgot they possessed.
The playroom waited at the end of the hall.
Toy shelves lined one wall.
Books filled another.
Stuffed animals occupied nearly every available corner.
The room looked exactly the way every child deserved a room to look—safe, warm, and unquestionably loved.
A little boy sat alone at the small reading table, quietly pushing a red toy truck back and forth without making a sound.
Nathan was five years old and had arrived only two weeks earlier, yet in that short time he had spoken fewer than twenty words.
I sat across from him without interrupting his game.
"Morning."
He didn't answer.
That was alright.
Some children trusted silence before they trusted people.
I simply picked up another toy truck and began driving it slowly across the table.