Instead, she asked me to come upstairs with her.
In the room we still called the spare room, the walls were still painted Emily’s lilac.
Lily sat on the bed.
“I feel sorry for him.”
I sat beside her.
“But I don’t know if I can look past it. Emily died. And then Dad left.”
She looked at me.
“I don’t understand how you lose one daughter and then choose to lose the other.”
There wasn’t a gentle answer, so I didn’t invent one.
“You may never understand it.”
Her eyes filled.
“You stayed.”
“Of course I did.”
“No, Mom. You stayed for all of it. The birthdays. The frightened nights. You stayed until I believed I was okay.”
My throat tightened.
“You’re everything to me.”
I took her hand.
“And you don’t owe your father forgiveness because you feel sorry for him.”
She nodded.
“If you want him in your life, we’ll take it slowly. If you don’t, that’s your choice too.”
“What if he disappears again?”
“Then he’ll answer to me before he gets another chance to hurt you.”
Later, when Lily asked, “What happens now?” I didn’t answer for everyone.
“I don’t know.”
For once, that didn’t scare me.
“But nobody gets to decide for anybody else anymore.”
I looked at Lily.
“You decide what you want from him.”
Then I looked at Dad.
“And you will never keep another urm truth from me because you think I can’t survive it.”
His eyes filled.
“I won’t.”
“And I decide if and when I forgive either of you.”
That night, Lily brought the final envelope into Emily’s room.
For Lily — Age Eighteen.
“Want me to go?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Stay.”
So I did.
She opened the letter herself.
And this time, protecting my daughter didn’t mean standing between her and the truth.
It meant sitting beside her, in the room that still remembered her sister, while Lily decided what came next.
