“How could you not tell me?” he asks, and there’s no accusation in it, only pain. “Baby girl, how could you carry that alone?”
My eyes fill immediately. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“No?” His laugh is broken and terrible. “Because you succeeded anyway.”
The tears spill over before I can stop them. “I know, Dad.”
He comes back to me then, kneeling in front of my chair the way he used to when I was small and scraped open from falling on the pavement outside the clubhouse.
“Why?” The question is soft. Destroyed. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
I cover my mouth with one hand, trying to hold myself together, but it’s impossible now. He’s looking at me with my mother’s death sitting between us, and both of us know it.
“Because of Mom,” I whisper.
His face changes.
“I was four,” I say,
