She nodded again and reached for the yogurt bags at her feet, pretending suddenly to be very interested in whether I had bought the right flavor. I let her pretend. Children deserve transitions back to normalcy after truth. They should not have to sit suspended over the whole abyss.
By the third week, practicalities took over.
Apartments were viewed.
Storage options discussed.
Dad made lists.
Mom sulked.
Rachel found a new rental and moved Mason out on a rainy Wednesday morning, loading bins into her SUV while apologizing to me at least six times and to Lily twice, though Lily only shrugged and said, “It wasn’t your fault,” in a tone that made her sound older than I wanted.
Before Rachel left, she pulled me aside in the driveway.
“I should have seen this sooner,” she said. “The way Mom talks about Lily. The way Dad never stops her.”
I zipped Lily’s raincoat into the backseat where it had slipped loose from a grocery bag. “We all should have.”
Rachel looked at me strangely then, as if the sentence unlocked something she had been circling.
“You know,” she said, “I used to think Mom loved me more.”
I turned to her.