Noah traced a wet circle on the table with his finger. “Do you still love him?”
The question landed softly and still managed to take my breath away.
Lily looked at me too.
Children know when adults lie. They may not always understand the words, but they feel the crack in them.
So I told the truth carefully.
“I loved the person I thought your father was,” I said. “And I’m very sad. But love is not the same as letting someone hurt our family.”
Noah nodded slowly, trying to place that somewhere inside his eight-year-old heart.
Lily reached for my hand across the table. “What happens to us now?”
I looked at my children—my beautiful, frightened children—and felt something steadier than anger rise in me.
“We stay together,” I said. “We tell the truth. We ask for help when we need it. And we take one step at a time.”
