Daniel stood in the doorway staring at it.
“You took it apart.”
“I couldn’t look at it.”
He nodded.
Then he went into the garage and closed the door.
That was the first time.
For the next eighteen years, every September 9th, my husband disappeared into that garage for about an hour.
I never asked why.
I thought I knew.
I didn’t.
Our surviving daughter was named Hannah.
For nine days, I had two daughters.
Then suddenly everybody behaved as though I had one.
That wasn’t cruelty.
It was survival.
Hannah was nine days old.
She couldn’t understand death.
So we told ourselves we’d explain when she was older.
Then she was five.
You don’t sit a kindergartner down and say:
“You had a twin sister, but she died beside you before you were old enough to remember her.”
At least that’s what I told myself.
Then Hannah was eight and terrified of death after our dog died.
Not then.
At twelve, she was bullied badly enough that we moved her to another school.
Definitely not then.
At fifteen, she went through a period of panic attacks.
We couldn’t possibly tell her then.
Then she was seventeen, filling out college applications, worrying about grades and scholarships and whether her boyfriend actually liked her or simply liked having a girlfriend.
