from the floor.
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“I made us a house.”
She held up the page.
There were three figures in front of a square with a chimney.
Lily.
Me.
And someone else.
My chest tightened.
“Who’s that?”
“Daddy.”
I sat beside her.
Ethan’s stick figure had a blue shirt and enormous hands.
“Why are his hands so big?”
“He fixes things.”
I almost laughed.
Almost cried.
Children remembered what adults forgot.
Before our marriage became silence and lawyers and locked accounts, Ethan had repaired broken cabinet doors.
Built Lily’s crib.
Fixed toys with tiny screwdrivers.
Maybe that was why grief inside a marriage was so strange.
You weren’t only grieving what someone had done.
You were grieving every good thing that had once been true at the same time.
“Do you miss Daddy?” I asked.
Lily nodded.
“Do you?”
The question nearly broke me.
“I miss some things.”
She accepted
