“In every story I tell you,” she said. “In the flowers she loved. In the yellow walls upstairs. In the letters she wrote. In the way you laugh, and argue, and love things hard. She is not here the way we want, but she is not gone from us.”
Bridget, ever the practical one, asked, “Do we get to see the letters?”
“Not all of them yet.”
“When?”
“When you’re old enough to understand them without carrying what children should never have to carry.”
Margot, who hated partial information, narrowed her eyes. “That is not a real answer.”
Dorothy smiled sadly. “It’s the truest one I have today.”
That night, after they were asleep, Dorothy opened the small cedar box in her closet where she kept Colleen’s letters, the journal, the first ultrasound with purple hearts drawn around three blurry forms, and a tiny pair of white baby shoes with yellow daisies.
She ran her fingers over the box lid and wondered, not for the first time, how motherhood remained active long after the daughter was gone. How every stage of the triplets’ growing required Dorothy to decide not only what to say, but when to say it.
There was still more truth ahead.
Grant had petitioned twice for limited contact over the years.