And she looked at me for a bit and then she said: “We went in a car to Auntie Dalia’s and that’s further.”
Eight years old. Over a mountain road at night.
And I did not answer her,
and she did not ask again, and I thought about it for about six weeks and then I did the only thing I could think of, which was tell her the truth.
I sat on the end of her bed in the February and I said that I had wanted their father to be surprised, and that I had wanted it to be big, and that I had used the helicopter to make it big, and that the big part had been for me and not for them.
And she listened to all of it with her hands under her chin.
And then she said: “Was he sad?”
And I said yes. I said he was frightened and sad and he sat down on the step.
