A ten-year-old’s guilty conscience set the stage for a tale most painful.

The breaking voice of a daughter lost, a love in death, yet faithful.

If time had wheels attached, I’d roll them back.

To make sure you knew it was never your doing.

Before the weights were fastened to your heart.

I’d go back to the start, and tell you sometimes, the surest things can fall apart.

How could you have done a thing?

You’ve got to know this was out of your control.

What happened in your world, sadly happens all the time…

And so often, the most innocent are left to pay the toll.

Sweet Audrey crying in that fifth grade moment of absolution.

Mommy’s hands had never left your side throughout this life.

She knows you didn’t do it.

She would wipe away your tears. And she’d tell you the truth, I know. I know.

Let me tell you what I know…

She was there when you were sitting up in bed reading yourself the same story she used to tell you every night.

Though you never get her voice just right, your memories still try to ring out the last drops of her happy tone from the blanket she once draped over your sleeping frame. Let me tell you.

Let me tell you something else.

Did you know that Mommy had been taken to a place with a thousand little girls like you?

Girls whose mothers miss them just as much.

Girls who left this world so swiftly.

Who, like candles, were blown out as quickly as they flickered into being?

Did you know they are so thankful everyday for that sweet storyteller you call Mommy?

Let me tell you, they ask her about you every night…

And she never gets tired of bragging about you.

I promise, she always hopes they’ll ask her something new… About you.

I remember being ten years old and watching you break down.

And to myself these days, I wonder if you ever came around.

If you found it in your aching heart to put that burden down.

And I can’t help wondering if you’re a Mommy now.

If time had wheels attached, I’d roll them back for you.

I’d break my back to give you what you missed.

I’d snap you from that trance of lies by the warmth of your mother’s kiss…

And she’d tell you, what I didn’t know to tell you, many lonely years ago.

“You’re not a Mommy Killer. Let me tell you what I know…”