Even Angels Fall

Epilogue

                         ~~~~Christina~~~~

As Mike said, we were fine. Our life wasn't anywhere near perfect. We had been two kids starting out with a baby and not much else, but we were alright.

A few months after Lizzie was born, Mike and I took her and moved to our own little apartment. And I do mean little. It was so small, it made Steve's apartment, which wasn't very big, look like a palace. It had one bedroom, one bathroom, and the main living area which was sort of the kitchen, living room, and everything else, all combined. 

But it was all we needed. I liked having Lizzie close by me at night anyway, so she didn't need her own room just yet. Steve said we could have stayed with him for a while longer, but we really needed our own place. It wasn't fair to him when Lizzie was crying all night, even though he said he didn't mind. I had a feeling that after a few more months of sleepless nights, he would come to sincerely regret his generosity.

But we also needed to be on our own for Mike's sake. He would have let us stay with Steve if I'd asked him to, but I knew he needed to stand on his own. He needed to feel like he was taking care of us and not depending on Steve as a safety net. So when Lizzie was three months old, we moved to our tiny apartment.

Mike worked for Steve for another year before a better paying job came along that he wasn't able to turn down. He was making pretty good money, and after a few months we were able to move to a bigger apartment.

Unfortunately it didn't last. The company laid a bunch of people off including Mike since he was one of the last one's hired. And since Steve had hired someone else, he couldn't go back to that job.

From then on, it was a constant game of musical chairs. Mike would change jobs and we would move according to what we could afford. It was especially hard for him since he didn't have a high school diploma and not many people seemed interested in someone with just a GED.

I tried to work when I could, but without even a GED and with Lizzie to take care of, it wasn't really practical. Plus Mike still flipped out a tiny bit when I would mention it. 

At one of our apartments, the woman next door started asking me to watch her son while she was at work. So for a while, I had a little bit of income, but since we moved so much, it didn't last very long.

But five years later, we were still doing alright. Maybe we weren't as financially stable as would have been nice, but we were surviving. And we'd never had to go without anything we really needed.

Mike would ask me sometimes if I was happy. I think he wanted to reassure himself that he hadn't ruined my life. I would just smile and honestly tell him was completely happy.

Sure I worried about things and I missed my parents, but Lizzie made up for everything. Every time she smiled or laughed or gave me a hug or called me Mama, my heart would just melt. I knew nothing could ever compare with having her in my life. I would gladly give up everything all over again, for her.

I couldn't help worrying about the future though. About the kind of future we were going to be able to give her. She was fine for now, but she was still too little to really understand how different our family was from some other families. 

Of course she was still too little to understand the concept of money or that we really didn't have much. And she didn't notice yet how much younger Mike and I were than the other moms and dads she saw. But one day she would.

She must have been the most unselfish child there ever was. She just didn't care about things. She liked to play with toys like any normal kid, but she didn't hesitate to give them to someone else. If some other kid wanted her toy, they never got a chance to steal it from her because Lizzie would hand it over just to make them happy. I was proud that she was that way, but I worried about the day she realized that other kids had so much more than she did. As unselfish as she was, I had a feeling that was still going to sting.