She stands alone in a quiet room filled to the brim with toys. Her father has given her much of them. He has pilfered his bank account to give her all of these toys, these dolls and these plastic horse figurines and those tutus and the dollhouses that came with the dolls and the other things, too, things that she has played with once and only once, things that are now coated in dust.

The rest of the room is like that, too. Dust-covered. The only occupants for these several years have been only the toys. Where a bed once was there are now only dolls, only pink and periwinkle-colored stuffed animals and items from whatever toy company might have closed recently. She remembers the curtains, now the color of faded yellow, always being drawn closed, the world outside available only in precious few spurts. There are plastic silverware and tea sets and other things that little girls, herself included, own and had played with, but never with another person and always with her dolls.

She remembers that is how it has always been. Her companions for many of her younger years were these sullen, still, silky figures, who all had different voices and different attitudes but all of which came from the same source. She now walks over to one of those tea sets, a cheap plastic imitation of a real set, and sits down at the tiny chair that is covered in draping cloth. She spots a familiar face. Mr. Elephant. He is sitting opposite of her, the same black top hat that had a little bit of fluff sticking out from a hole that had never been sewn shut sticking out of his head. He stares at her with beady eyes. She remembers playing with him, for he was the first friend her father had given her.

But that is never the case, is it. It is never the case that the first friend remains the first and only friend, and with her father being as rich and as sad as he was it was inevitable that he should go and buy more friends for her, to fill the empty hole that was left in his heart that he hoped to fill with the joy in hers. That is why she always accepted those gifts, even if she secretly hated the Cabbage Patch kids or the Amareican Girl dolls that never quite looked like her. She looks around and sees those kids and dolls and the other animals, all placed to the side, on the bed or desk or drawers. They are all looking at her. Are they judging her as she judges him?

She places a hand on the tea set. She remembers his reasoning for getting her so many: “Little girls love playing with tea!” It was something he read from a single-parent catalogue magazine he had subscribed to for some time. It was in the daughters section, she remembers. He was drawn to those kinds of articles because they provided a quick and easy solution and could anyone blame him? A father may try his hardest but some are just not meant to understand their daughters and if the rift between him and her is large enough then suddenly only gifts seem to be the proper materials with which he can build a bridge across. And gifts speak far louder than does the father, anyway, especially when they have a little string that you can pull and the gift says, “I love you,” in that cheesily high-pitched voice she has come to know and call Mother.

Mother.

The pain will never go away with that word. She knows this and she knows that she wishes it were otherwise. She wishes that things were different. She wishes she had a real mother, not the felt versions that were a quarter of her size and called her “Baby” and not her real name. And she wishes that she had a real father, too, not one who hid behind these gifts as though they were really the product of his love and not his true feelings, that of his discarding of her—

But no. She shakes her head. It is far too late to be bitter, now. Far too late. Maybe if her father were still here she would be able to be bitter towards him, but he is not here so it is pointless to be.

There are footsteps coming up the stairs. They are from her father’s maid, a woman she never knew, a woman whose face was as blank and stoic as the dolls around them, with a voice as condescendingly light as theirs. She looks around, amazed by the sight. She says to her, “He loves you very much, doesn’t he?”

They all say that.

“I know,” she says, because she knows that that is what is expected of her. She knows he loved her; that is the lie that she is forced to tell everyone and herself everyday. She must convince herself of that, so that she can put aside that tragic demon once and for all and move on. She is to know she loved her, but how can she, when she does not know love except in the form of the expressionless dolls and toys and trinkets left to her by a broken man?

“Is everythin’ all right, Sugar Belle?”

Sugar Belle looked up from her coffee, the straw wedged between her lips. She managed a smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Honestly, I was going to ask you the same thing, Big Mac. You haven’t been the same since yesterday.”

Mac frowned at her, and she tried not to take it personally. He had been frowning a lot, as of late. It didn’t suit him, but then again, this whole situation didn’t suit anybody. “Yeah, well… it’s been on my mind, that’s fer sure,” he murmured.

She reached out to touch his hand. “Hey. It’s okay. Maybe we should go do something after this. Get your mind off of it.”

He grunted. Her heart sank a little and she brought her hand back. “We shouldn’t be talkin’ ‘bout me,” Mac then said. “I’m concerned about you, Sugar.”

Are you really? “I was just thinking. About my father.”

“How is he?”

“Still old, still cranky and grumpy. Still the same, I suppose.” She sipped her coffee. The taste grew noticeably more bitter, as if a switch had been activated to increase that factor. “But, like I said back then. He’s given me his blessing, even if he’s not particularly thrilled about it. So things are good between him and me.”

Please don’t believe that. Please believe me.

“That’s good to hear,” he said.

“Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”

She looked out the window, at the street, just as how Mac had done so before. “The reason I was thinking about him was because I was also thinking about Ink,” she said.

That got his attention; why did that get his attention? “Ah… huh?”

“You know, because of her mom, and… mine… and yours…”

She had to choose her words carefully, because the topic required it. Mac was a remarkably composed individual when he wanted to be, and she saw now the fruits of that labor; how the spoon he had been stirring his coffee with stopped moving, how his fingers tensed into a fist around its handle. But he let out a breath and all was fine.

She gave a wan smile. “All of us, huh? All of us with this.”

“Eeyup,” he said quietly.

I guess that’s why you feel so much concern for her. Why you felt so much concern for me. She blinked. Why you feel so much concern for me.

“But Mrs. Quill is awake,” he said.

“That she is. Thank goodness. But still, the toll this must have taken on the poor girl… How sad that only a few of us can ever understand it.”

That sort of poetic sentiment came easily, now, because she had years to perfect the craft of turning sorrow into soliloquy; but who would listen and be moved by it, but they who would suffer at the hands of it?

Mac clenched his hand. “The poster was supposed to help, but what if it isn’t enough? What do we do then?”

What do any of us do then? Sugar Belle stared outside and became lost again in her thoughts.

She is young, maybe seven or eight. Her father is a very rich business man in the city. She doesn’t particularly care for that sort of thing, but the money allows her father to buy her things, things that she is supposed to love, and so she is supposed to love him, and she is almost convinced she does. Money buys love. That was the lesson then.

Her passion is in baking, but right now she is not allowed in the company’s kitchen to try her hand at crafting the perfect pie. It is not as though her father did not permit it; rather, he wanted to direct her interests elsewhere. This was his reasoning, but she saw through it. She saw a man haunted by a fear unknown to her, and that was why although he did not expressly say she wasn’t allowed, he did not let her go and create at will. This was why today she was at the company, dressed in formal wear—a miniskirt, suit, and white gloves, if you can imagine.

Right now she is outside her father’s office eating some Animal Crackers. She sits in the little chairs that are always outside these kinds of offices. There is a secretary across the way, busy with whatever is on her computer, her face a neutral frown, her fingers typing, her eyes darkened with lack of sleep and passion. The secretary has not looked up since she has arrived, and she doubts she ever will. There is a young, well-dressed man sitting in another row of seats. He flashes her a smile, but his face is all worn and nervous, and she does not smile back, because she does not think her father would approve.

Inside there is her father and another man. She can hear them through the walls, but the words are confusing and long. Something about altercations, payments, money-laundering scheme, pyramids. Taking company profits down the drain. There is shouting—but she is used to this. Her father is a loud shouter. He could win tournaments with that kind of voice just as much as he could buy out toy stores. The other man is shouting, too, but his voice is not as loud as her father’s. He would lose, she decides, if he tried to enter the same tournament. Many would. Many must.

“Pack your bags,” her father shouts. More shouting, then a slew of bad words and desk-slamming. The well-dressed man flinches, but she does not move. She eats her Animal Crackers, finishes the bag, then throws the bag away and still sits there, waiting.

The door bursts open. The other man is running away, his face burning, her father’s voice trailing after him like an angry ghost. “Get out and don’t you come back!” he shouts. He is fond of that phrase.

He turns to the well-dressed man there. “Ah, Harvest. Just the fellow I wanted to see.”

“Y-yessir?”

“How would you like being head of our Executive Department? I believe it requires a strong leadership role, and unlike that half-ass twit Pomegranate, I think you’d fit the job. What do you say?”

“Thank you, sir,” Harvest stammers.

Her father smiles wide, then. It is a smile that is disarmingly honest. “Good, good,” he says. Then he turns to her, the smile still there. “Let this be a lesson, Ink: if you don’t like something or someone, you can dispose of them and get someone better. It’s how the world is run, you know.”

Then he takes Harvest in an arm. “Now, let us discuss further what is expected of you, young man.” He leads him into the office, where there is no shouting. Later there would be clinking glasses as the two drink to a toast.

Harvest lasted in the position for less than three months. She watched him start off fresh and then peter off at the end until nothing remained but a dull shell of a human being. And her father’s words echoed in her mind the day he was let go: “If you don’t like someone, you can dispose of them and get someone better.”

It is how the world is run, you know.

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas how to convince Ink to take this opportunity?” Mac said. He was very articulate, Sugar Belle noted; more articulate than when they first met, even more than when they had been dating the first time. Something had changed. Either he had eaten dictionaries since then, or he had decided to open up more.

“A few,” she said, “but they’re not as concrete as simply giving her the poster and explaining what it means.”

Mac winced. “Eeyup… well, that’s harder than it looks, Sugar Belle.”

Sugar Belle sipped her coffee. “I know, Mac. I know.”

“It’s just…” He was rambling now, and she let him. “With her and Braeburn together, things feel weird. Complicated, I guess. I dunno why, but it sorta feels like Braeburn doesn’t want me and Ink to talk.” He frowned, then shook his head. “Naw, that can’t be it. Must be my mind playing tricks on me.”

Sugar Belle didn’t say anything. Her napkin seemed very interesting all of a sudden. Let him talk. Let him talk and then you will have a chance.

Big Mac sighed. He pushed his drink away from him, then brought his hands together. “Ah’m sorry, Sugar Belle,” he drawled. “I’m jus’ getting distracted again, ain’t I?”

“A little,” she admitted. “Besides, it’s not like you can force the girl, can you? And it wouldn’t be right to do so. She has to come to this on her own, without you shoving it in her face.”

He winced at her choice of words. Her eyes softened. “You mean well, Big Mac. You always did, and gosh, there isn’t a single soul out there who is as well-meaning as you, I don’t think. But you can’t let that get ahead of you, okay? Especially when the person you want to do good by isn’t… well, isn’t exactly in a position to receive it.”

He nodded. “Eeyup. I guess yer right, Sugar.” Then he forced a smile. “Well. How about we finish this here meal and go out for a bit?”

Sugar Belle nodded, also smiling. “Now there’s a fine idea, Big Mac.”

They paid the bill—60-40, as usual—and then went out again. It was late in the afternoon when they came out, and Canterlot was still busy. They didn’t want to have to walk through the crowds, so they got into Big Mac’s truck and began driving towards the park that was in the center of the city. They drove in silence, taking pleasure in mere company. Or at least, Sugar Belle tried to. She could see in Mac’s eyes that his mind was occupied with other things, and she hadn’t the full heart to try and bring him back to her.

She just wondered why.

In the April of that year she had made a mistake. It was a wet April, one of the wettest of that year, and she had foolishly decided to step out without so much as a coat, even as her father had warned her that it would likely rain. She thought this as nonsense, for the sky had been clear and cloudless and the air was warm. It was not rain weather, she had decided, so she had gone out in merely a blouse and a skirt, gone out against her father’s wishes for her to stay home, gone out because she had needed to go out and be alone.

She had gone to the park that was on the outskirts of Canterlot, where a single tree stood, where the benches were the color of red apples and the paths were always flat and filled with dirt. She did not really care for this earthly thing but that did not mean she could not enjoy nature at its finest. So now she is walking around the park and the park is green and the sky is clear and she is breathing it all in because she can and must. All the while she is thinking about her father, about what he keeps saying and what he has said before, and she does not know which piece to take and keep.

She hears a boom and thinks nothing of it— until, that is, she hears the pitter-patter of raindrops coming from the north. There is no time for her to run for cover before she is drenched in a flood’s worth of water. She stands in shock for a moment as the cold seeps its way into her skin, and suddenly she remembers she isn’t wearing any underwear, and that her blouse was a foolishly chosen white. There are people in the park who are running away, people who most likely would not see, but she blushes fiercely and covers her chest and runs for the tree.

There are boys at the edge of the park who are staring at her as she stares at them, her arms over her chest and her hair matted and flat. She can see them jeering, see them pointing. She wishes they would come over so she could give them a piece of her mind. Boys will be boys, she thinks. It is something she wonders if her father might say. The boys watch and they make their calls and intentions known and she does not respond to any of them, and so they are made bored and turn away.

It is still raining now and she cannot get out of the tree’s cover without getting drenched. So she stands rooted in place and is cursing the sky.

That is when he comes.

He comes unbidden and without an aura of latent desire that she has seen in so many others who sought her hand or her father’s approval. He comes quickly and with a parasol with strawberry patterns on it, and he beckons her out from under the tree. He has a coat on, and when he sees that her blouse has been soaked, he is quick to take it off and hand it to her. “Put this on,” he says. She notices he is looking at her eyes. No one else would look at her eyes; certainly not those boys from before. She puts it on and turns around so that she can put it on without revealing herself and he is polite enough to simply wait and turn so that he isn’t looking either.

“Who are you?” she asks when she finishes.

“Big Mac,” he answers kindly. He has a southern drawl to his voice, which is as deep as surely the ocean is deep, cliche as she knows that sounds. He shuffles on his feet, the umbrella out but his voice unable to form. She realizes he is asking her if she would like to take the umbrella. She takes it.

She does not run off, though her first instinct was to. No, instead she loops her hand around the umbrella’s handle, and then the same hand grabs Big Mac by the arm. “Walk with me?” she asks.

He stutters. Stammers. “Please,” she says.

He relents. He is blushing just as much as she is. But together they manage to walk out of that park. He walks her home, too, because that’s just the kind of person Big Mac is, the kind to make your life more convenient when he can.

It is later that they meet up and it is then that she decides she wants him, and it is then that she asks him out and it is then that he returns home with a happy smile, utterly surprised by what has happened while she, too, is indeed happy, but right now all she can think about is how he has done so much for her without asking for anything in return, and how he has done all this simply because it is who he is, and she is confused by this but does not ask what more he wants. She is content to simply walk with him home. She is so content that she completely ignores her father’s questioning look. She takes a shower and thinks of Big Mac, then.

They came to the park. The park was there.

“This is where we first met,” she said softly. “Do you remember? Under the tree? It was raining, you know.”

“I remember,” Mac said. “You were just a scared new girl, then, weren’t you? Just moved here.”

Mac stopped the car. They came out and began walking towards the tree. Sugar Belle held out a hand. Mac didn’t take it at first. She touched him, and then he took it.

The park was silent. The weather was still cold and not many folk wanted to be out and about in the park during this time. The path to the tree was therefore free and so they walked unabated.

And we began dating not long after, Sugar Belle thought.

They stopped at the base of the tree and looked up. The tree was old. It was twisted, too, though not unpleasantly. Right now it had no leaves, but some people had hung little orange lights from the branches for decoration. In the late hour of this day those lights were glowing dimly.

“It’s pretty,” she said.

“Eeyup.” Always so simple, Big Mac. You could give him the whole world like she had tried and he’d ask only for a single flower from it.

When she looked at him, his eyes were on the tree, but his mind was also elsewhere. Wrestling with the problem that was Ink. She stared at him for a moment longer, and then sighed, softly so that he wouldn’t hear. Slipping her hand away, she brought it up to his shoulder. “How did you and Ink meet, by the way?” she asked.

There was a flash of light behind his eyes, and he was back with her once more. He smiled. “It’s kinda funny, actually…”

His eyes were alight as he told this tale. Alight as they had once been for her. She tried to convince herself that it was the same now as it was then, but just like the dolls and the “I love you’s” that came from them, the conviction was weak and hollow.

It’s the night of her last mistake. At the time it was a mistake, but in the future she would vow to make no more of those.

Her father’s words have come to haunt her. She is playing with different dolls, too; dolls that are as alive as you and I. The playing comes easily, because the dolls are usually unaware of what she is doing with them. But on this particular night the dolls came to life and now she is forced to live with this mistake.

She leaves her room, her hair a mess, the blanket brought with her. There is shuffling. A window opens and the other occupant leaves that way. It is later that she learns he is hit by a car, driven to the hospital, where he spends the next several years in a coma. It is a mistake she will never live down.

She comes down the stairs, now, still a mess. There is wetness in her eyes. It mirrors the wetness outside.

She calls his name but receives no answer. She thinks he has gone, and her heart goes cold and still as she finally reaches the floor. She says she can explain, even though she knows she can’t. She still loves him. The words come out as though she were a doll with the string being pulled. Who is pulling her? Her father? No, she has stopped blaming him. She has only herself to blame.

But she lets out a breath of relief, for she sees he is still in the home. She wants to say we can fix this, that it’s okay, it was a little mistake, nothing a little bit of alone-time can fix. But he is unresponsive to her approaching him. His back is turned, and his form is hulking and hunched and it is filled with rage that she can fill blistering off of him.

When he turns, the anger flashes on, and then off, and then there are his eyes, and she is lost in them. She is lost in them and there in them is a sea of infinite sadness and shock. A cold knife of betrayal cuts through her; it is not because she is the one who is betrayed. There are no words. She stops, the blanket nearly falling from her body, the body she has only shown one person, and it is not the one who stands in front of her.

There is a silent question on his lips. She comes forward, a hand outstretched. She tries for the smile that she knows once won her his heart.

He flinches back. Her arm falls. Is it over? Oh, yes, it is. Oh, no, please. Please don’t let it be so.

Her apology is lost on him. It is lost on her, too. It is as though she never said it, as though she simply cannot bring it to life. He turns, and runs into the darkness of the rainy night, and she knows she has lost him.

“If you don’t like someone, you can dispose of them and get someone better.” She would not think, until later, how she became that someone for him.