On the morning of my ex-husband’s wedding, I was fastening the last tiny button on the back of my daughter’s dress when she asked me a question I wasn’t ready for.
“Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?”
Amelia was standing in front of the full-length mirror in my bedroom. She’s nine. She was wearing a pale lavender dress with a white sash and little puffy sleeves. Her grandmother had bought it for the wedding. Amelia had picked it out herself, at the mall, three weeks earlier. She said lavender was “calm.”
She was staring at herself in the mirror.
But she wasn’t looking at the dress.
“If Dad marries Aunt Lina,” she said slowly, “is she still Aunt Lina?”
My fingers stopped on the last button.
“Of course, sweetheart.”
Amelia frowned at her reflection.
“Even if she keeps saying she’s going to be my bonus mom?”
I swallowed hard.
“She’s still your aunt,” I said. “That doesn’t change.”
Amelia nodded. Slowly. Like she was filing that away somewhere.
Then she asked another question.
“And you’re still her sister?”
I had to look away.
I looked at the window. At the dresser. At the pile of laundry on the chair in the corner. Anywhere but at my daughter’s face in that mirror.
I couldn’t answer that.
Amelia thought about her question for a few more seconds. I could see her thinking. She chews on the inside of her cheek when she thinks. She’s done it since she was three.
Then she turned around. She picked up the little white gift bag sitting on my bed. Lina had sent it over the day before. Dropped it on my front porch without knocking. It had pink tissue paper sticking out of the top and a little card tied to the handle with a ribbon. For my flower girl! Love, Aunt Lina.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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