“I was going to tell you.”
I crouched down. “Why don’t you two go watch cartoons? I’ll bring soup.”
They hesitated, then went upstairs.
I turned back to him. “Talk.”
He looked around the basement like he hated that I was seeing it. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
Silence.
That took some of the heat out of me.
I laughed once. “Exactly.”
He came down the stairs slowly. “It’s not what you think.”
“I don’t even know what to think.”
His voice cracked. “It’s all I had left.”
That took some of the heat out of me.
Not all of it, but enough.
I said nothing.
He sat on the bottom step and stared at the floor. “After she died, everyone kept telling me to be strong. So I was. I worked. I packed lunches. I got through each day. People said I was amazing.” He laughed bitterly. “I just kept going for the girls, but I was numb.”
I said nothing.
“I put her things down here because I couldn’t get rid of them,” he said. “Then the girls would ask about her, so sometimes we came down. We looked at pictures. Watched videos. Talked about her.”
