She had hidden it because she had spent years trusting herself to hold everything together whenever life split open.
Telling Sonia was the hardest part.
We sat with her on the couch that afternoon.
Elena explained that Mommy was sick and needed special medicine for a while, and that the man Sonia had seen was not a bad man.
He was a helper.
Sonia listened with both hands wrapped around a stuffed rabbit whose ears had been chewed flat from years of being loved.
When Elena finished, Sonia leaned against her and said the sentence that undid me all over again.
— I knew he wasn’t bad.
You looked sad, not scared.
Children notice the truth before they know the words for it.
The months that followed stripped our life
down to basics.
School runs.
Blood counts.
Plastic pill organizers.
Laundry folded around clinic schedules.
Elena’s appetite vanished.
Then her hair started coming out in the shower in soft dark clumps she tried to clean up before I saw them.
