Lights (2019)

Phallic Symbols

"Blair?" A small voice questions. I look up. I hadn't realized that Phoebe and Daisy were in here, playing with some of Lottie's old dolls. I feel incredibly guilty, that they witnessed just about everything--they had seen or heard a good majority of the intervention down stairs. Their young little eyes were wide with worry.

"Blair, open the door!" Harry calls from the hall, we hear his fist come in contact with the door. "Come on baby!"

I get up to the door and press my forehead against it. I can practically feel him on the other side, his hand resting in the same place where mine is. I felt bad, but I just did not have the energy to give to him right now.

"Blair," I heard softly through the wood of the door.

"I'm sorry, Harry." I whisper.

"Blair, please open the door." He pleads.

"Please go, Harry."

I hear Harry sigh and slap the door lightly with his open palm before disappearing. I turn away form the door and massage my forehead. I sit down on the edge of my bed and try not to cry again. "Come here," I say to the twins, and they climb onto my bed, hugging me around my neck.

"Don't cry, Blairrie," Daisy says. "It's okay." I smile wanly at the sweet nickname she gave me.

"Why is Harry so mad?" Phoebe asks.

"Because he was worried about me," I answer.

"Why?"

"Because I'm sick," I say tell them, tears pooling in my eyes. "I'm sick."

"You don't look sick," Daisy says, pressing her palm to my forehead as if checking for fever.

"It's not a kind of sick you can see," I say. "It's the type of sick you know is there; you feel it inside of you."

"Blairrie, get better," Daisy says. "Take your medicine and you'll get better." Her eyes begin to water and I realize just how close I've become with these girls in the past year and a half

"We want you to get better," Phoebe tells me.

More tears spill down my cheeks as I laugh and hug the two to my chest. "I'm getting better, Daisy," I say. "Don't worry. I'm not going anywhere."

Phoebe plays with a strand of my hair. "Harry doesn't want you to go anywhere, either," she says. "Harry loves you."

I bite my lip to keep from crying all over again. I sigh. "Sometimes I think Harry loves me," I say. "But other times I just don't think he does."

"No," Phoebe says, shaking her head rapidly. "No. That's not how it works."

"What?"

"Love. That's not how love works." I see the glint of wisdom in her childish eyes.

Daisy nods in agreement. "Harry loves you. That means he loves you all the time, no matter what." She presses her small thumb under my eye and wipes away a tear. "And you love him," she goes on. "All the time, no matter what."

I pull the girls back to me, their faces burying in my chest as I kiss the tops of their heads.

"Come on," Phoebe says, tugging my hand as she slides down from the bed. "Play dolls with us."

I nod, feeling a real smile creep across my face as they shove a platinum blonde doll in a crimson dress into my hand. And I play dolls with them until nine o'clock, when Jay knocks on the door to get the two ready for bed. I tuck them into their sweet little beds and kiss their foreheads, realizing that they may not be my real family by blood, but they're all I've got now.