Chapter 3 - What Lily had heard before
The next morning Lily asked:
“Are we divorced?”
I nearly dropped my coffee.
“No.”
“Grandpa said we leave.”
“He told us to leave his house.”
“Not Daddy?”
“No.”
She thought about that.
Then:
“Rachel says Daddy’s family is real family.”
I sat.
“When?”
“At Grandma’s.”
“What exactly did she say?”
Lily stared at the table.
“She said I came with you.”
That was technically true.
Mark was not Lily’s biological father.
Her biological father, Daniel Rowe, died when she was eighteen months old after a workplace accident.
Mark met me when Lily was three.
We married two years later.
He had never formally adopted her because Daniel’s parents remained involved and Mark believed adoption was unnecessary to prove commitment.
He called himself:
Dad when Lily did.
Mark when she did.
He paid school fees.
Took her to pediatric appointments.
Read bedtime stories badly.
He loved her.
Rachel apparently viewed the absence of adoption paperwork as a ranking system.
“What else did she say?”
Lily hesitated.
“She said her babies will be Hales.”
Rachel did not have children.
“Did she say you weren’t?”
Lily nodded.
“And Grandma?”
“She said don’t argue with Aunt Rachel.”
There was the family pattern.
Not direct agreement.
Failure to correct.
Then Lily said:
“Rachel said you steal parties.”
I froze.
“What?”
“She said you were snooping because you want her job.”
That connected the Thanksgiving violence to the documents.
May you like
Rachel knew I had been asking questions.
She did not know how much I had found.
