could also mean giving someone room to choose while making sure they knew where home was.
One Sunday morning, I walked into the kitchen and found all four women at the table.
June was laughing.
Ava was arguing about something.
Claire was rolling her eyes.
Vanessa sat quietly listening.
For a moment, I stopped in the doorway.
The scene looked almost ordinary.
But it wasn’t.
There were twenty missing years in that room.
Three daughters who had grown up without their mother.
A woman trying to understand children who were now adults.
A brother who had spent most of his life believing he had already lost his sister.
Nothing about it was simple.
Then June looked up.
“Dad, are you going to stand there all morning?”
I smiled.
“No.”
I pulled out my chair.
Twenty years earlier, Vanessa had left three babies in a hospital and trusted someone else to
