“Does Our Mommy Think About Us?”
Grace was seven years old when she asked it.
One morning, while we sat at the kitchen table, she looked up and said:
“Daddy, does our mommy think about us?”
I set down my coffee and looked across the table at her. Then I answered as honestly as I could.
“I don’t know what she thinks, baby. But I know what I think. Every single morning.”
Grace tilted her head.
“What do you think, Daddy?”
I smiled.
“That you two are the best thing I ever did.”
Lily, who never liked being left out of any conversation, immediately spoke from behind her cereal bowl.
“Even when we’re being annoying?”
I laughed.
“Especially then.”
That became our thing. A small tradition that belonged only to us.
And as the years passed, we held on to it.
“You Were Chosen This Morning”
Then came the teenage years.
Whenever one of the girls made it through something difficult, I would quietly remind her:
“You were chosen this morning.”
Both of them would roll their eyes the way teenagers do whenever they hear something they secretly need to hear.
They never admitted how much it meant.
But I knew.
Whenever they asked about Claire, I always gave the same answer.
“Your mother made a choice she thought she needed to make. I made a different one.”
I never called their mother names. I never turned her into a villain. I simply told the truth as gently as I knew how.
What I never told them was about the box.
That story would have to wait.
