“You brought her doll to my porch with a note about Brooke.”
“We were trying to keep the family together.”
There it was.
The phrase adults use when they want the person who was hurt to absorb the cost of everyone else staying comfortable.
I looked toward the living room.
Emma had fallen asleep sideways on the couch with her white jacket tucked beneath her chin.
That little jacket had spent the night at the hospital in her hands because it smelled like home.
My parents had been talking about preserving a family.
Emma had been clutching a jacket because the family gathering she had just left no longer felt safe.
“I am keeping my family together,” I said.
My father’s voice hardened.
“By cutting everyone off?”
“By protecting my daughter.”
My mother whispered my name.
I knew that voice.
It was the voice she had used when Claire died.
