Just the solemn dignity kids sometimes bring to truths adults assume will destroy them.
Finally Theodore said, “Then he wasn’t our father.”
Dorothy reached across the table and covered his hand.
“No,” she said. “He was not.”
Years later, each of them would understand different parts of that answer.
But that night, what mattered was simpler.
Their mother had chosen them.
That truth was larger than any lie built around it.
Part 8
When Dorothy turned seventy-two, the triplets surprised her with a garden party in the backyard.
Not a professional kind with rented tents and catered trays. The better kind. String lights hung slightly crooked across the fence. Jolene brought bagels because some traditions refuse to age. Doctor Prescott, now Nina to everyone who mattered, arrived with lemon bars. Fletch grilled too much food and called it preparedness.
Margot, Bridget, and Theodore—eighteen now, impossibly—moved through the yard with the easy confidence of young adults raised in a house where love had weight and continuity.