He died without telling me.
Worse, he had placed the responsibility on Lily.
An innocent child.
The one person in the world I could never allow my anger to touch.
Coward.
That was the word that entered my mind.
Coward.
There were questions I would never get to ask him.
Was Josie frightened?
Did she ask for me?
What were her last moments really like?
Daniel was gone.
There would be no confrontation.
No explanation.
No apology I could refuse.
Only a stuffed rabbit that no longer smelled like the little girl who once carried it everywhere.
Then Lily spoke.
“Are you mad at Dad?”
Her voice was tiny.
She sat on the kitchen floor with her knees against her chest.
I wanted to protect her.
But I couldn’t lie.
“Yes.”
Her chin trembled.
“But none of this is your fault. Not even a little bit.”
She looked down.
Then asked the question that broke me.
“Are you going to leave me?”
Everything inside me stopped.
Of course.
She had already lost her mother.
Then her father.
Now she had delivered something that made the last parent she had scream and cry.
She thought she was about to lose me too.
“No.”
I dropped to the floor.
“No, Lily. Come here.”
She climbed into my lap and grabbed my shirt with both hands.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I repeated it until her breathing slowed.
But one sentence kept replaying in my mind.
You still don’t know why Dad chose you.
And slowly, an ugly thought formed.
Maybe now I did understand.
Daniel had witnessed what happened to Josie.
He knew I had lost a child.
Maybe he had looked at me and thought:
There.
A mother without a daughter.
A daughter without a mother.
Problem solved.
Suddenly, every memory I had of Daniel looked different.
