Emma and Claire did. I drove them.
I hadn’t planned on going inside. But in the hospice parking lot, Claire reached across the seat and took my hand the way she used to when she was little and scared of the dentist.
“Please, Dad.”
So I went in.
Vanessa was smaller than I remembered. That was the first thing that struck me. For two decades, she had taken up an enormous space inside my anger – a towering figure, a villain in every story I told myself at night. Now she was just a thin, gray woman propped against white pillows, her hands resting on the blanket like something set down and forgotten.
Her eyes found the girls first. She began to cry before anyone spoke.
“Emma?”
Emma nodded.
Vanessa’s gaze moved. “And Claire.”
Claire sat down in the chair beside the bed.
Vanessa looked toward the doorway. “Where’s Sophie?”
