my arm and whispered, “Breathe, Dad. You’ve done harder things than this. You did all of it.”
I gave her away to a good man — a genuinely good one, I’d checked, the way a father of six daughters checks — and I sat in the front row where I’d sat for fifteen years of recitals and plays and graduations, and I watched my oldest girl get married, and the seat beside me was empty, and for the first time in fifteen years, the empty seat didn’t hurt.
Because it wasn’t a mother-shaped hole anymore.
It was just an empty chair, next to a father who’d never once left.
Here’s what happened after.
Maya never reached out again. I heard, through the long grapevine of a small town, that she moved to another state. The box, I’m told, she kept. I hope Adele was right. I hope it became a mirror. I’ve
