“They forgot me,” she said, her voice very small.
“No, baby, something must have come up, an emergency maybe, they would never just—”
“They forgot,” she said again, and the tears came before she could stop them. “They don’t love me.”
Marcus sat beside her and pulled her into his lap. He held her and said nothing about her being wrong, because he already knew she was not entirely wrong, and he was not the kind of man who lies to his daughter to protect the feelings of people who do not deserve it. He shot me a look over her head that was the quietest and most controlled version of fury I had ever seen on his face.
After we got her to bed, after she had cried herself into the exhausted, heavy sleep of a child who has been genuinely hurt, I sat on the couch while Marcus paced.
“That little girl waited by the window for two hours,” he said. His voice was low and tight. “She asked me if she had done something wrong to make them not come.”
“I know.”
“Sarah. This is not the first time they have disappointed you. But it is the first time they have broken your daughter’s heart with it.”
He was right. I knew he was right. And I sat with that knowledge and felt the story I had been telling myself for years, the one about how family was complicated and people were doing their best and things would improve, begin to loosen from whatever it had been anchored to.
At eight forty-seven that evening my father called.
