“But she was never an excuse,” Rachel continued. “She was part of your life, even when you were too young to remember everything.”
“Dad doesn’t talk about her much.”
The words were not accusation, but they landed like one.
Rachel looked at me.
I had spent years telling myself I was protecting Emma from grief. In truth, I had also been protecting myself from conversations I did not know how to survive.
“You’re right,” I said.
Emma waited.
“I thought talking about Mom might make you sad.”
“I’m already sad sometimes.”
“I know.”
“And when nobody talks about her, it feels like I’m the only one who remembers she was real.”
Rachel lowered her eyes.
I reached across the table.
“You should never have felt that way.”
Emma took my hand.
“Can we talk about her now?”
“Yes.”
“Even if it makes you sad?”
“Yes.”
That night, Rachel opened a photo album on the living room floor.
We told stories until Emma fell asleep against my side.
I told her about Claire getting lost on the way to our first date and arriving forty minutes late with a paper map covered in angry circles. Rachel told her how Claire once tried to bake a birthday cake shaped like a piano and created something that looked more like a black-and-white canoe.
