“Your mother loved you more than anything in this world. She did not leave because of you. She died because something happened inside her body that nobody could predict.”
Lily’s eyes filled.
“Vanessa said maybe Mom got tired.”
Ethan’s breath shook.
“She lied.”
He hugged Lily against him.
“She lied to you.”
Over Lily’s shoulder, Claire quietly closed the yellow folder.
That night Ethan finally understood the shape of the battle ahead.
The bruises that could be photographed were only part of it.
Vanessa had been teaching Lily to doubt her own memories.
To doubt her father.
To doubt whether she deserved to be loved at all.
And unlike broken decorations, those wounds could not simply be swept from the floor.
