”Wow….I can’t imagine how hard that was for you to see, being so young…” Piper replied, looking directly at Alex who was still looking off in the distance.

Alex, prepared for a judgmental response, had no idea Piper would be so understanding and more worried about how she felt in that situation. Alex looked back at Piper and smiled. She was so lucky to have this beautiful girl draped around her.

”I pretended for like ever that I never saw anything, I would just look the other way when I knew she was ”working” or just run to my room as soon as I got home. The older I got and the more I figured out what she was doing the less I wanted to go to the park with her anymore. She caught on one day that I hadn’t joined her in a while so she asked me about it. I completely lost it and exploded on her. She was crying, I was crying, it was a huge mess….” Alex said looking down again.

”….but I’m glad I did it because she thought she was good at hiding it from me. She thought I had no idea,” Alex said with a small laugh.

”So you never came back to the park after that?” Piper asked, softly again. She was scared she was prying too much and didn’t want to overstep her boundaries. She did want Alex to know she was concerned and wanted to hear more, though.

Alex continued her previous thought, ”….so anyways after our huge fight that day I ran off to my room crying, all dramatic. A few minutes later my mom came in and apologized, crying the hardest I’ve ever seen her cry. She had all these excuses for why she did it.” Alex shook her head.

”…I never understood her excuses until I got way older…..So anyways after she apologized she promised me from that day on anytime we came to this park it would be ’me and her’ time,” she said, using air quotes for emphasis.

Piper smiled and saw a little smile from Alex, too.

Alex took a big breath as if to be glad the hard part of the story was over, ”so from then on anytime we came here together we played and played until we couldn’t move anymore. We would come here almost every Sunday and have lunch. It’s always busiest on Sundays so we found a secret spot that we called ours,” Alex let out a small laugh, thinking back on all the wonderful memories she had with her mom at this very spot.