“I did.”
“Why?”
“Because it was for me.”
Hannah frowned.
“What?”
“The guilt.”
I finally said the thing I’d never said aloud.
“I wasn’t protecting you from your guilt.”
My voice broke.
“I was protecting myself from mine.”
Daniel stared at me.
Even he hadn’t known.
“The night Rosie died, I woke up first.”
My hands shook.
“I went to her crib.”
“I touched her.”
“I called 911.”
“I did CPR until the paramedics arrived.”
I wiped my face.
“And after everybody told me there was nothing I could have done, I spent eighteen years thinking there must have been.”
“Mom…”
“If I’d checked five minutes earlier.”
“If I’d held her longer after feeding her.”
“If I’d noticed something.”
“If I’d—”
Hannah grabbed my hand.
I stopped.
“The coroner said SIDS.”
“Yes.”
“So you didn’t cause it.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
That question broke something open.
“No.”
I whispered it.
“No.”
Hannah squeezed my hand.
For eighteen years, I had been terrified that telling her about Rosie would give my daughter survivor’s guilt.
Instead, I’d built our entire family around my own.
The party ended quietly.
Nobody ate the cake.
Hannah asked everyone to leave.
Then she carried the wooden chest upstairs.
