He paused.
“I was too afraid to tell it.”
MONTHS LATER
Months passed.
One afternoon, Isla sat on Mom’s lawn with Kai resting against her chest.
Theo kicked happily at the blanket beside her.
She still missed Esme.
Of course she did.
Nothing we could offer erased the loss of her mother.
But the haunted expression she carried when I first saw her at Cedar Hollow had begun to soften.
She laughed more often.
A toothbrush appeared in our guest bathroom.
She started spending weekends with us.
She argued jokingly with the twins as if two babies could understand every word.
I never tried to become her replacement mother.
She already had a mother.
Esme.
My job was not to erase her.
I simply kept opening the door.
“Want to come this weekend?”
Then the next weekend.
And the one after that.
Our family did not eliminate Isla’s grief.
