Hannah nodded at the floor.
“She said everything was going to be different after you got married.
She said I had to stop acting like I was the most important girl in your life.”
And then my daughter asked me a question that I will be answering for the rest of my life, in one form or another, in a hundred different conversations.
“Dad — is it bad that I remind you about Mom?”
I took both of her hands.
They were cold.
It was seventy-one degrees outside and her hands were cold.
“No,” I said.
“You have not done one single thing wrong, and nobody in this world is ever going to punish you for being your mother’s daughter.
Not ever.
Not while I’m alive.”
