Each sentence slipped around the wound instead of entering it. Lily listened once from the kitchen doorway while Dad attempted one of these speeches and then went upstairs without speaking. After that I stopped allowing the attempts in her hearing.
“Try again,” I told him one evening after he said for the fourth time that they “hadn’t meant to hurt anyone.”
Dad looked tired. “What do you want me to say?”
“The truth.”
He spread his hands. “That is the truth.”
“No,” I said. “The truth is that you believed Lily would absorb the loss more quietly than Rachel or Mason would. You believed her pain would be more manageable. You believed she was easier to move than the rest of us. Start there.”
He stared at me for a long time. Then looked away.
That was answer enough.