There were six daughters in total.
Six little girls who still needed help tying shoes, finishing homework, finding missing socks, brushing tangled hair, and understanding why their mother had suddenly stopped coming home…Elena left for Julian.
Her boss.
A man with money.
A man with a bigger house, better vacations, expensive restaurants, and the kind of life she had apparently decided she deserved more than the one she already had.
Their father never told the girls that.
Not then.
He simply said:
“Your mom needs some time.”
When they asked how much time, he said:
“I don’t know.”
When they asked whether she still loved them, he said:
“Of course she does.”
When Chloe waited by the front window on her seventh birthday because Elena had promised to call, he sat beside her until midnight.
“She probably got busy,” he said.
When the phone never rang, he made pancakes the next morning shaped like hearts.
