We met when Lily was five. He worked maintenance at the apartment complex where we lived, and my kitchen sink had started leaking into the cabinet.
Lily followed him around while he repaired it.
“Do you fix everything?” she asked.
“Most things,” Tony said.
Tony never tried to replace Adam. He never asked Lily to call him anything special. He simply showed up.
Lily called him Dad for the first time while we were cutting the cake.
He attended school plays, learned how to braid hair badly, and sat beside her bed whenever she had nightmares.
When we married two years later, Lily called him Dad for the first time while we were cutting the cake.
“Dad, you got frosting on your sleeve.”
Tony froze.
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