Sophie shrugged.
“My daughter.”
She smiled.
“That’s it?”
Daniel kissed the top of her head.
“That’s everything.”
As Sophie grew older, we told her more about her condition. We never wanted her to discover the truth from another child or from something she found online.
By thirteen, she understood that her life might be shorter than most people’s.
One evening, she asked us the question Daniel had feared since the day of her diagnosis.
“Am I going to die young?”
Daniel’s hand tightened around mine.
I wanted to lie.
I wanted to tell her she would be eighty years old someday and complain about her grandchildren being too loud.
Instead, we told her that nobody could know exactly how much time they had, but that her illness could make her life shorter.
Sophie sat quietly for a while.
Then she asked:
“Are you sad you got me?”
I felt as though someone had punched me in the chest.
“No.”
She looked at Daniel.
He was already crying.
Then he did something I never expected.
