“He kept things from you.”
That one landed.
But it didn’t make her right.
“Neither were you.”
“Mark and I chose Cecelia’s name together.”
“Sally…”
“Go home.”
She blinked.
“What?”
“You’ve questioned Mark’s judgment. You’ve let people question mine. Now you’re rewriting what he wanted for our daughter.”
“Go home.”
Her mouth trembled.
“I just lost my son.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know what that feels like.”
“No.”
I stepped closer.
“I just lost my son.”
“And you don’t know what it feels like to lose my husband while carrying the child he’ll never meet.”
She went quiet.
“We can hurt differently without destroying each other.”
Violet left.
***
Cecelia was born two weeks later in a quiet, uncomplicated delivery.
When they placed her against my chest, she tucked her thumb into her fist.
She went quiet.
Mark slept like that too.
“Of course you sleep like your dad.”
When Violet came to meet her, she asked, “Can I hold her?”
That question mattered.
I handed Cecelia over.
Violet looked down at her.
“Can I hold her?”
“Hi, sweetheart.”
Cecelia yawned.
Violet smiled through tears.
“I knew your daddy when he didn’t have teeth either.”
For a minute, grief stopped fighting us.
Then, a few weeks later, I heard Violet talking to Mark’s aunt in my living room.
