Chapter 9: What Lily Asked at Dinner
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home.
I bought the ingredients for the pasta Lily liked — the one with the butter and the parmesan and the fresh basil that she always picked the leaves off of and then ate anyway.
I bought a small bunch of flowers for the kitchen table because Anna used to keep flowers on the kitchen table and I had stopped doing that at some point without noticing.
Lily was sitting at the kitchen counter when I came in.
She had her school reading book open but she was not reading it.
She was watching the door.
When she saw the grocery bags, something in her face relaxed.
"Are you making the pasta?" she asked.
"Yes."
She closed the book.
"Can I help?"
"You can grate the cheese."
She slid off the stool and washed her hands without being asked.
I set the block of parmesan on the cutting board and handed her the grater.
We worked in silence for a while.
The kitchen filled with the smell of butter and garlic.
Lily grated the cheese carefully, pressing down with both hands.
"Dad," she said.
"Yeah."
"At the hospital.
When Detective Collins said it wasn't over." She kept her eyes on the grater.
"Is it over now?"
I stirred the pasta.
"The part where people were trying to take you away from me — yes.
That part is over."
"But there's still the court stuff."
"There is.
It will take a while.
But none of it changes where you live or who takes care of you."
She nodded slowly.
"Okay."
A minute passed.
"Dad.
Did Uncle Michael ever actually love me?
Or was it just because of the money?"
I turned the heat down on the stove.
I turned around and looked at her.
She was still holding the grater.
She was watching me with her mother's eyes, waiting for an honest answer.
"I think," I said carefully, "that he did love you.
And I think he also made choices that hurt you very badly.
And those two things can both be true at the same time."
She thought about that.
"That's confusing."
"It is," I said.
"It stays confusing for a while."
She set the grater down and looked at the pile of cheese.
"I think I made too much."
"There's no such thing as too much parmesan."
She almost smiled.
Not quite.
But almost.
We ate at the kitchen table with the flowers between us.
Lily ate two full bowls, which I noted without saying anything.
After dinner she did her homework at the counter while I washed up.
At eight-thirty she came to find me in the living room.
"I'm going to bed," she said.
"I'll come up in a minute."
She stood in the doorway.
"Dad.
The recording on my watch.
Did it help?"
"It helped a lot."
She looked at her wrist — bare now, the watch still in evidence.
"Good," she said.
"I'm glad I forgot to stop it."
She went upstairs.
I sat in the living room in the quiet house and looked at the flowers on the kitchen table, still visible through the doorway.
Yellow and white.
Anna's colors.
I had not cried since the hospital.
I had been too busy, too focused, too needed.
I cried now.
Quietly, in the empty living room, for Anna who had known and tried to protect us.
For Lily who had been eight years old and frightened and had still found a way to tell the truth.
For the two years I had believed Michael when he said he just wanted to help.
I cried until I was done.
Then I went upstairs and sat on the edge of Lily's bed until her breathing slowed and deepened and she was fully asleep.
I pulled the blanket up to her chin.
"Your mom would be proud of you," I said quietly.
Lily didn't answer.
May you like
She was already gone, deep in some dream I hoped was peaceful.
I turned off the light and left the door open, the way she liked it.
