Either way, the marriage I was mourning wasn’t real. It was a story I’d told myself about who we were and what we could be. The actual marriage, the one where my husband slowly pushed my daughter out of her own home while I made excuses for him. That marriage deserved to end. I put the photos and cards back in the box and stored it in the garage.
Maybe someday I’d be able to look at them without feeling this particular brand of sadness. For now, I needed to focus on moving forward. Something shifted in Lily over the next few weeks. She started smiling again. These small moments of lightness that reminded me of who she’d been before my husband moved in.
She brought friends home after school without asking permission first. Just walked in with two girls from her volleyball team and headed straight to the kitchen for snacks. She played music in her room loud enough that I could hear it downstairs. Some pop song with a beat that made her door rattle. She sprawled on the living room couch doing homework with her books spread across the cushions and her feet up on the armrest.