For a long time afterward, Marcus lived almost entirely for Lily.
Work, school drop-offs, simple dinners, bedtime stories, and answering questions no little girl should have to ask so young—where her mother had gone, whether she was cold, and whether she still loved her.
Marcus built his life around keeping his daughter afloat while somehow keeping himself afloat too.
Then Sarah came into his life, and she seemed to understand all of it.
She never asked Marcus to remove Hannah’s photographs.
She never complained when Lily talked about her mother at dinner.
Every year, she even joined Lily and her grandmother Evelyn when they went to place flowers at Hannah’s grave.
Marcus watched all of it with enormous gratitude and mistook that patience for kindness.
Now, kneeling in the hallway, he began to understand that it may never have been kindness at all.
The preserved photographs, the tolerance for Lily’s grief, the visits to the cemetery—each gesture had perfectly matched what a grieving widower needed from a new partner.
