Refuge Up in Flames by Shirley Jump

Author:Shirley Jump
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-09-15T20:57:57+00:00

* * *

She crossed to the little girl, who was still completely immersed in the tablet. “How you doing, Ginny?”

Ginny smiled. “I made lots of pictures. I’m gonna show my daddy.”

“You did. Good job.” The moment with Mike had gotten intense there for a second. Julia could tell he was worried about her being at the coffee shop. But was his worry the normal worry of a friend or something more? And if it was something more, was she ready to deal with that?

No. Definitely not. So she redirected all her attention toward Mike’s daughter instead. “This is great, Ginny. What picture did you draw first?”

“A snowman.” She dotted two eyes in the center of the snowman’s face. The drawing was crooked, the snowman more of a snowball, probably because Ginny had been working with her nondominant hand. The tablet had made it easier, but also a bit of a challenge. “I named him Winter.”

“That’s a great name for a snowman.”

Ginny looked down at the screen. “I can’t draw.” She put her chin on her arm. “I’m a bad drawer.”

Julia had seen this frustration and sadness in so many of her patients. Learning how to do things in a new and different way was frustrating and tough. Lucky for Ginny, her cast would be off tomorrow. But until then, Julia could see a little girl with a well of emotions in her eyes. “Why don’t I help you draw something?”

Ginny’s face brightened. “You will?”

“Sure. Just tell me what you want to make a picture of. Let’s try...” Julia pretended to think. In truth, she’d done this exercise with several children before who were struggling after a trauma. “A picture of you and someone else.”

“Okay.” Ginny struggled to use the stylus to make a small stick figure on one side of the screen. She sighed. “That doesn’t look like me.”

“What if you add your cast? Because that’s part of you for right now.”

“Yup, and it’s pink cuz pink is my favorite color.” She clicked on the fuchsia crayon and swiped it across the stick figure arm. Her face brightened with just that small touch.

“That’s great. Does that look more like you now?”

Ginny was scribbling brown hair on top of the stick figure. “Uh-huh. It’s got my hair. Daddy says my hair is difficult.”

Julia bit back a laugh. She could imagine the vet struggling to tame those wild curls. Every time she’d seen Ginny, she’d noticed the little girl’s hair needed some detangler and a lot of patience, two things she wasn’t sure Mike had. “Now, let’s draw someone beside you. Who’s it going to be?”

Ginny stared at the blank space beside her self-portrait for a moment. “My mommy,” she said softly. “I miss her a lot sometimes. But I don’t always tell Daddy because it makes Daddy sad. He told me he’s sad, too.”

“I’m sure your daddy would love to see a picture of your mommy and that it wouldn’t make him sad, because it would remind him how much you both loved her.

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