her.
He told me he had.
“She doesn’t want you involved in her life,” he said one night.
I sat on the edge of our bed.
“Did I do something?”
“No, honey.”
“Then why does she hate me?”
“She’s still grieving her mother. She thinks I chose you over her.”
That explanation hurt.
But it made enough sense that I accepted it.
So I stopped asking questions.
I did not stop sending gifts.
A scarf.
A journal.
Earrings.
Something small every birthday.
Every year, they came back.
And every year,
