“They forgot me,” she said, her voice very small.
“No, baby, something must have come up, an emergency maybe, they would never just—”
“They forgot,” she said again, and the tears came before she could stop them. “They don’t love me.”
Marcus sat beside her and pulled her into his lap. He held her and said nothing about her being wrong, because he already knew she was not entirely wrong, and he was not the kind of man who lies to his daughter to protect the feelings of people who do not deserve it. He shot me a look over her head that was the quietest and most controlled version of fury I had ever seen on his face.
After we got her to bed, after she had cried herself into the exhausted, heavy sleep of a child who has been genuinely hurt, I sat on the couch while Marcus paced.
