Out of the mouths of children, apparently.
The rest of the party happened almost normally after that, cake and off-key singing and Mom crying twice more before the night was over, though the second time was clearly happy crying.
Lily insisted on sitting next to me the whole time, sliding her chair closer until our shoulders touched, not saying much, just occasionally patting my arm like she was checking I was still real.
“Are you gonna be sad?” she asked at one point, quiet enough that only I could hear it. “About your other dad?”
“A little,” I admitted. “But not the way I used to be. This is a different kind of sad. The kind that doesn’t need fixing.”
She nodded like that made perfect sense to her, then went back to carefully picking every sprinkle off the top of her cake slice, one at a time, the way she always did.
