More days followed. I braided. I smuggled her granola bars. I checked her spelling words while Daniel slept off chemo.
She'd moved into my heart
Before long, she was sitting in my lap during his treatments, and I let her.
***
Daniel was harder to read. He'd watch me across the room with a strange look, like I was a word on the tip of his tongue.
"What?" I asked him once.
"Nothing." He smiled. "Gratitude. And the morphine."
I thought he was a dying father relieved that somebody cared about his little girl.
Daniel was harder to read.
The two of us got close, too.
Tea at odd hours. Long talks. One evening I told him about my husband and Josie. Not the whole accident, because I never tell that part. But enough.
His eyes filled, and he turned toward the window.
"Sorry," he said. "It's just... I... that's a lot to hear as a father."
***
As he got weaker, the three of us started to look like a family. Then one afternoon, while Lily was at school, Daniel took my hand.
The two of us got close
"Marry me."
"Daniel. We barely know each other."
"I love you," he said. "And I won't lie to you. I'm scared. More than anything, I want to know that when I'm gone, Lily will be with someone who loves her."
By then, I already loved her.
I said yes.
"Marry me."
We married in his hospital room.
I wore a white sundress, and Lily wore yellow and never let go of my hand.
Before the wedding, Daniel had already signed the paperwork naming me as Lily's guardian after his death.
***
Two weeks later, he died.
Lily and I moved into his house, into a quiet that felt like somebody holding their breath.
We married in his hospital room.
That first year was hard.
We grieved him through burned pancakes and two-in-the-morning nightmares, but slowly we built things that belonged only to us.
Friday pancakes shaped like whatever Lily demanded. A car song with made-up words. A way of sitting on the couch with our feet tangled together.
Then, a year to the day after the funeral, Lily walked into the kitchen while I was stirring soup.
That first year was hard.
She'd been quiet for days.
She held a small box in both hands.
"Dad told me to give this to you today," she said. "Before he died, he showed me where he hid it in the back of his closet. He made me promise not to touch it until today."
