They can change someone’s entire life before breakfast… and then immediately ask for dinosaur-shaped pancakes like nothing extraordinary happened.
While I stood at the stove making coffee, Lily sat cross-legged on the floor coloring another picture with complete concentration, humming softly to herself.
“What are you drawing now?” I asked.
Without looking up, she answered, “A happy Denise.”
Something tightened in my chest.
Because the woman who had sat at our kitchen table the night before had not looked happy.
She had looked exhausted in the deep, frightening way people do when life has slowly convinced them they no longer belong anywhere.
Denise had eaten carefully, almost apologetically, like someone who wasn’t used to being offered warm food without conditions attached to it.
