And smiling with a kind of happiness I had never seen in any photograph of him.
“Who is she?”
Caroline’s voice trembled.
“Her name was Miley.”
Something about the room seemed to close around me.
“Frank was married before he met your mother,” Caroline revealed. “Miley was his daughter.”
My fingers tightened around the edges of the photograph.
“Where is she?”
Caroline lowered her eyes.
“She died when she was five.”
The quietness of those words somehow made them worse.
“There was an accident at a lake. It happened quickly. Frank blamed himself even though there was nothing he could have done.”
I dropped into a chair because my legs could no longer support me.
“Why didn’t he tell me?”
“After Miley died, his marriage collapsed,” Caroline said. “He stopped speaking to people. He stopped answering my calls. We were best friends. He packed away every photograph, every toy, every reminder that he had ever been a father.”
My gaze returned to the small star-shaped cutter.
“The pancakes.”
“He made them for Miley.”
Caroline sat opposite me.
“Then one morning, after he married your mother, you climbed into his lap and fell asleep against his chest. When you woke up, you asked whether he knew how to make pancakes shaped like stars.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“You were four.”
She rested the cutter on the table between us.
“He called me that afternoon. He was crying so hard I could barely understand him. He said he had made the pancakes. He said he had spoken Miley’s name aloud for the first time in years and had not fallen apart.”
I gripped the edge of the table.
“He did not give you something that belonged to his daughter,” Caroline added. “You gave him a way to remember her without believing the memory would kill him.”
Tears distorted the kitchen around me.
“Then what was the lie?”
Caroline turned toward the window.
“After your mother died, Frank packed his truck.”
My stomach dropped.
“He planned to leave?”
“He drove here the night after the funeral. He said your aunt could raise you. He said staying would be selfish.”
“Selfish?”
“He was terrified.” Caroline’s voice cracked. “He told me, ‘Every time Rosalie laughs, I hear Miley. Every time she runs toward the street, I stop breathing. I can’t survive burying another daughter.’”
Pain tightened across my chest until breathing became difficult.
“He promised me he would stay.”
NEXT PAGE
