I sit in the car outside my house for a long time before I go in.

  The lights are on inside. Dylan’s car in the drive. Lilia’s bicycle leaned against the wall, which means she stayed, which means she’s been waiting for me to come back and explain.

  I owe her the explanation.

  I owe her more than that.

  I get out of the car.

  Dylan opens the door before I reach it. He looks at my face and he opens his arms and I go to him and he holds me in the doorway for a moment without asking anything.

  “Lilia’s inside,” he says quietly.

  “I know.”

  I go in.

  Lilia is at the kitchen table. The box is in front of her. She’s been going through it again, the book, the ceramic thing, the photograph laid out in a row. She looks up when I come in.

  I sit down across from her.

  I put my hands on the table.

  “Elise was my daughter,” I say. “From before Dylan, before you. I left when she was five years old and I sealed that door and I told myself she was fine because I needed her to be fine.”

  Lilia is very still.

  “She came to find me,” I say. “She found me twice. The second time she stood on my front step and I looked at her and I thought she seemed okay. She was composed and she said the right things and she walked away and I let her.” I stop. “She looked exactly the way I used to look when I was trying to hold everything together. And I didn’t see it. I didn’t let myself see it.”

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  I look at the photograph on the table. My daughter laughing. Happy in that moment, real and unguarded.

  “She found you,” I say. “She didn’t know who you were at first. When she figured it out she didn’t tell you because she didn’t want to complicate your life.”

  Lilia’s voice, when it comes, is very quiet. “When did she.”

  “She’s gone,” I say. “She died before Sebastian. A few months before.” I hold the words steady. “The police told him. He wasn’t the same after.”

  The kitchen is very quiet.

  Lilia looks at the things on the table. The book with her name written inside. The ceramic thing on its side. The photograph.

  “She knew she was saying goodbye,” Lilia says.

  “Yes.”

  “She said she loved me like a sister.”

  “She meant it in every direction that sentence goes.”

  Lilia is quiet for a long moment.

  She looks at the things on the table. The book. The ceramic thing. The photograph.

  “She knew she was saying goodbye,” Lilia says.

  “Yes.”

  “She said she loved me like a sister.” Her voice breaks slightly. Just slightly. “She said that right before she told me she was leaving. And I thought she just meant it the way friends say it.”

  “She meant it in every direction that sentence goes,” I say.

  Lilia looks at the photograph for a moment. Then she looks up at me and her face is open and wrecked and completely without blame.

  “Why didn’t she just tell me,” she says. Not angry. Just. The question of someone trying to understand something that doesn’t have a clean answer. “I wouldn’t have cared. I wouldn’t have loved her any differently.”

  “I know,” I say. “She knew that too, I think. She just didn’t want to put it on you. She was protecting everyone she loved until the end.”

  Lilia is quiet.

  “That’s so like her,” she says finally. “That’s so exactly like her.”

  She gets up from her chair. She comes around the table and puts her arms around me and holds on. I hold her back. Neither of us says anything for a while.

  Dylan puts his hand on my shoulder.

  The three of us stay like that in the kitchen.

  I’m sorry, I think. I’m so sorry. I’m late and I’m sorry and I’m here.