“Your mother made a choice.”
I told them the truth as gently as I could.
What I didn’t tell them was about the box.
***
For the first few years after Claire left, I sent letters.
Not for me. I understood fairly quickly that Claire had made a final decision and wasn’t in the business of reconsidering it.
I didn’t tell them about the box.
I sent them because someday, when the girls were old enough to have their own feelings about their mother, I didn’t want to be the thing standing between them.
So I wrote. School photos tucked into envelopes with a line or two about who the girls were becoming.
Report cards.
A note when Grace won a regional spelling bee at nine.
Another when Lily performed a violin solo at her fifth-grade concert and stood so still and focused that I had to press my hand to my mouth to keep from making noise.
