Rose asked the question in April.
She had been circling it for months, I had watched the approach with the peripheral attention I kept for things that were forming in her, the questions she asked around the edge of other questions, the way she returned to the beginning chapters of her family story with increasing frequency.
She asked it on a Tuesday morning in the library.
She had come in with her book of birds, which had replaced the book of pelicans as her current primary reference, and she sat across from me while I was writing and looked at me with the direct attention that was her specific quality.
“Mama,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Did you want to marry Daddy?” she said.
The library was quiet.
I put down my pen.
I looked at my daughter, four and three quarters, who had asked
