Chapter 4
Sunshine
No matter where I happened to be inside Harbor House—sorting donations in the pantry, folding laundry in the children's wing, watering flowers behind the house, or carrying groceries through the kitchen—the children always managed to find me.
I had long since stopped wondering how they knew where I was.
Somehow they simply did, as though they possessed an instinct for recognizing the people who would always stop what they were doing to listen.
Perhaps they recognized something in me before I recognized it in myself.
Or perhaps children simply possessed a gift adults slowly lost somewhere between growing up and learning to be afraid of trusting people.
Whatever the reason, I had stopped questioning it months ago.
By the time breakfast dishes had been washed, counseling sessions had begun, and most of the volunteers settled into their morning routines, I had barely finished organizing the art cabinet before a tiny hand slipped into mine.
"Miss Sunshine?"
I looked down.
Emily stood beside me holding an upside-down coloring book against her chest.
She couldn't have been older than four.
Her dark curls bounced every time she moved, and one of her shoelaces had somehow worked itself loose again despite Daisy tying it less than fifteen minutes earlier.
"Can you help me?"
"Always."
She held up the coloring book with complete seriousness.
"I don't know what color dragons are."
I blinked.
"That's a very important problem."
She nodded.
"I've been thinking a long time."
I crouched until we were the same height.
"What color do you think dragons should be?"
Emily frowned thoughtfully before looking toward the window.
"Happy."
I smiled.
"Happy isn't usually in the crayon box."
"It should be."
"I agree."
She opened the box resting on the nearby table before carefully selecting a bright yellow crayon.
"I think..."
She looked back at me.
"...yellow is close."
"I think it is too."
She immediately began coloring with the absolute concentration only children seemed capable of giving ordinary things.
The dragon slowly transformed into something entirely unique.
Bright yellow wings stretched across the page above purple feet, a green tail, and brilliant orange horns. The dragon shouldn't have made any sense at all, yet somehow it was absolutely perfect, exactly the way only a child's imagination could make something impossible feel completely real.
Nathan wandered over a few minutes later carrying his stuffed fox beneath one arm.
He climbed quietly into the chair beside Emily without speaking, reaching for a blue crayon before beginning his own picture.
Several weeks ago he would have hidden in the corner.
Today, Nathan quietly chose the chair beside Emily without anyone encouraging him.
A few weeks earlier he would have hidden in the corner, convinced the safest place in the room was as far from everyone else as possible.
Now he wanted to sit beside another child, and that single decision felt like one more quiet step toward healing.
I sorted fresh paper onto the shelf while listening to them chatter softly between themselves.
Emily held up her drawing.
"My dragon flies."
Nathan nodded.
"My fox can't."
"He doesn't have wings."
"He doesn't need them."
Emily tilted her head.
"Why?"
"'Cause..."
Nathan looked down at his stuffed animal.
"...he already knows where home is."
The words settled gently inside my chest.
Children rarely realized the things they said could linger long after the conversation ended.
Home.
The word had never meant one place to me.
Growing up inside the Order taught you that buildings weren't homes simply because people called them that.
A home couldn't exist where fear slept in every room.
Where little girls learned silence before they learned laughter.
Where children measured safety by listening for footsteps in the hallway after dark.
Home should have sounded exactly like this.
It should have been the soft scrape of crayons across wooden tables, little voices arguing over the proper color for dragons, laughter drifting in from another room, and the warm smell of cookies floating through open doorways.
Looking around Harbor House, I finally understood that home had never been about walls or buildings.
It had always been about feeling safe enough to breathe.
The realization tightened something painfully familiar inside my chest.
I turned away under the excuse of straightening another shelf.
Not because I wanted to hide.
Because memories had a way of arriving without asking permission.
Oliver had loved dinosaurs with an enthusiasm that touched everything around him.
Every book he carried beneath his arm, every drawing he proudly thrust into my hands, and almost every conversation we shared eventually wandered back to dinosaurs.
He spoke about them with such absolute certainty that, for a little while, it was easy to believe they might still be hiding somewhere beyond the compound's fences.
He had once informed me with complete confidence that if dinosaurs still existed, they would absolutely refuse to eat the vegetables served during supper.
Leaning closer one evening as though he were sharing an important secret, he'd whispered, "Broccoli is too dangerous.
The dinosaurs know." I'd laughed so hard I nearly spilled soup across the dining hall table, and for a few precious moments the walls around us had seemed a little less frightening.
He'd grinned proudly.
Mission accomplished.
For the rest of that week every younger child refused vegetables unless Oliver personally explained which dinosaur had recommended them.
I closed my eyes for the briefest moment, hoping the memory would soften before it carried me somewhere I wasn't ready to go.
His face remained as clear as the day I'd last seen him.
Messy brown hair.
Bright hazel eyes.
The gap where his front tooth had finally fallen out after weeks of proudly wiggling it.
He had only been six years old, far too young to understand why the adults whispered whenever certain wagons arrived at the compound or why some children quietly disappeared without explanation.
The truth was, he had been far too young to spend even a single day of his childhood inside a place like that.
I missed him with an ache that never seemed to fade completely. Some losses became quieter with time, but they never truly disappeared. They simply learned how to wait patiently until an ordinary moment—a child's drawing or an innocent question—invited them back into the light.
"Miss Sunshine?"
Emily's voice gently pulled me back.
I blinked.
She stood directly in front of me now.
Holding the dragon.
"Did I make him happy enough?"
I smiled despite the ache still lingering beneath my ribs.
"I think he's the happiest dragon I've ever seen."
She beamed.
"I named him Pancake."
I laughed.
"Of course you did."
"'Cause Charlie likes pancakes."
"She does."
"And dragons."
"I think she'd love Pancake."
Emily nodded with complete certainty.
"I'll show her tomorrow."
I watched her skip toward the reading corner, yellow crayon streaked across three tiny fingers and one cheek, before slowly releasing a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.
"You disappeared."
The familiar voice made me turn.
Lark stood in the doorway carrying a basket of freshly donated children's books.
"I did?"
"For about thirty seconds."
I hadn't realized.
Lark set the basket onto one of the low shelves before beginning to sort picture books into neat stacks.
"You looked far away."
I hesitated.
"I was remembering someone."
She nodded gently.
"You don't have to tell me."
"I know."
The kindness in that answer almost undid me.
She never pushed.
Never asked questions people weren't ready to answer.
Perhaps that was why everyone trusted her so quickly.
After a few quiet moments she picked up a worn copy of Goodnight Moon.
"Charlie hid this under Remedy's pillow once."
I smiled.
"Why?"
"So he'd remember bedtime."
I laughed softly.
"Did it work?"
"For exactly one evening."
Lark grinned.
"Charlie considered it a complete success."
We continued shelving books together while sunlight filtered through the tall windows overlooking the gardens.
The children's wing always felt warmer than the rest of Harbor House, and it had very little to do with the heating.
Hope seemed to settle here more easily than anywhere else, gathering quietly in every finger-painted picture, every stuffed animal tucked safely beneath an arm, and every laugh that echoed through the hallways.
In tiny shoes lined neatly beside bedroom doors.
In finger-painted artwork covering the walls.
In stuffed animals that had finally become toys again instead of comfort objects clutched through another nightmare.
Lark held up another book.
"The Velveteen Rabbit."
"My favorite."
"Mine too."
She smiled.
"Charlie always cries."
"Already?"
"Every time."
I laughed.
"She's three."
"Exactly."
Lark slid the book onto the shelf.
"She says rabbits deserve happy endings."
The words settled quietly around us.
Children believed every story deserved a happy ending.
Adults learned differently.
Or...
They thought they had.
I looked toward the large windows overlooking the backyard where several children chased bubbles across the grass while Daisy clapped every time someone managed to catch one before it floated away.
Maybe...
Maybe Harbor House existed to prove adults had simply forgotten how stories could end.
Maybe happy endings weren't fairy tales after all.
Maybe they just took more people willing to help write them.
The afternoon passed the way most afternoons did at Harbor House.
Not quietly.
Peacefully.
There was a difference.
Quiet suggested emptiness.
Peace suggested people finally feeling safe enough to live ordinary lives.