The question came so casually that at first I thought I’d misheard her. We were walking down the front steps of the kindergarten, my fingers wrapped around her tiny hand, the late afternoon sun casting long stripes across the playground. She was swinging her pink backpack on one shoulder, humming a half-forgotten tune from class.
It had been a perfectly ordinary Wednesday. Then she looked up at me and said, “Daddy, why didn’t the new daddy pick me up like he usually does?”
Their minds were bright, unpredictable galaxies. But when I looked into her face, there was no playfulness, no hint of make-believe. Just simple curiosity.
“What… what did you say, sweetheart?” I asked gently, crouching to her level. “The new daddy,” she repeated as though the words needed no explanation at all. “He comes on some days.
He picks me up, and we get ice cream sometimes. But today he didn’t come.”
Something cold and sharp pressed itself into the center of my chest. “There is no new daddy,” I said, trying to keep my tone light.
“Just me. And Mom.”
She frowned, confused by my confusion. “But he said he was my new daddy,” she insisted.
“He told me he’d see me today too, but then you came instead.”Continue reading…
