You Stayed With Us

I want one

Lisa's POV

Scarlett, 3 years old

Scarlett was already bouncing in her seat before we even left the driveway.

"Dada, park! Park! Park!" she sang like some over-caffeinated parrot, kicking her little legs in her car seat.

I glanced at Cooper lying peacefully by the living room window as we pulled out from the driveway. "You're lucky, buddy," I muttered under my breath. "You get to rest. I get three-year-old chaos on legs."

Scarlett had been a whirlwind lately — somehow even more talkative, more opinionated, and approximately three times as naughty as she was last year. And yes, I'd done the math. Every day.

We got to the park, and before I could even tell her to hold my hand, she bolted. "Scarlett!" I called, jogging after her, but she was already halfway to the slides.

For the next half hour, I was basically Scarlett's unpaid camera crew and emergency medic. She ran up the slide the wrong way, went down the swings standing, tried to climb the jungle gym upside down, and even announced loudly to a group of strangers, "My dada can wun weally fast like a cheetah!" Spoiler alert: I cannot.

And yet, between chasing her and making sure she didn't attempt Olympic-level stunts, I had a moment to just... watch her. She was growing so fast — her messy pigtails bouncing, her little laugh carrying through the park. She was still my baby, but every day she looked a little less like the toddler I could scoop up in one arm and more like her own little person.

It was bittersweet. And terrifying. And exhausting.

We were about to head back when I made the fatal mistake of walking past a pet shop.

Scarlett froze. Her eyes went wide. "Dada. Pet."

"Yep," I said, trying to keep moving. "We've got one at home, remember? Cooper? Big, fluffy, eats a lot?"

But she was already plastered to the glass like a sticky note, staring at the variety of creatures inside.

"I want one," she declared.

"You have one," I reminded her.

"No, I want a new one. Now."

Here we go. "Scarlett, we can't just—"

She cut me off with the most ridiculous reasoning I'd ever heard. "But Cooper is tiwed all da time. He needs a fwiend. And I'm smol! Smol people need smol pets."

"That's... not how it works."

"Yes it is," she said, folding her arms like she'd just ended the debate.

When logic failed, she went straight for the nuclear option — her eyes welled up, her lip trembled, and then she started to cry. Loudly. Dramatically. Shakespeare-level performance.

"Scarlett, stop—"

"YOU NO WANT ME TO BE HAPPY!" she wailed, and suddenly I was public enemy number one to every passerby within a fifty-foot radius. People were staring. A woman actually whispered something to her friend while giving me the look.

I lost. "Fine. We'll go look."

Scarlett immediately stopped crying. Like magic. She took my hand, beaming. Manipulative little genius.

Inside, chaos. She ran from tank to tank, cage to cage. Rabbits, hamsters, parrots — she pointed at everything. "Dat one! No, dat one! Ooo, dis one has whiskers!"

Then she saw it — a massive Siberian husky, fluffy like a teddy bear, lounging behind the counter. It belonged to the shop owner, but Scarlett didn't care. She sprinted over and hugged it like they were long-lost soulmates.