“She said I’m your old family.”
“No.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
Tears filled his eyes now.
“You are not my old family.”
Ellie looked frightened by his emotion.
Grant forced himself to breathe.
“Marissa and I getting married did not replace anything.”
“What about Mom?”
“Your mom is still your mom.”
“She’s dead.”
“I know.”
Grant swallowed.
“That doesn’t make her nothing.”
Ellie stared at him.
Grant had not expected to have this conversation while sitting beside a dog’s water bowl.
Maybe that was what frightened him most.
Children rarely chose the moment adults were ready.
“Did Marissa tell you not to talk about Mom?”
Ellie looked down.
Not a nod.
Not a denial.
Something smaller.
Grant already knew.
“How long?”
She shrugged.
“Sometimes.”
“What happens if you do?”
“She gets quiet.”
“Anything else?”
“She takes stuff.”
Grant’s stomach tightened.
“What stuff?”
“Mom’s stuff.”
“What did she take?”
“The picture from the stairs.”
Grant knew the photograph.
Anna standing on a beach in Maine holding newborn Ellie against her shoulder.
Grant had noticed it missing.
Marissa said the decorator removed it while replacing frames.
“What else?”
“The blue blanket.”
Anna’s favorite blanket.
Gone in January.
Marissa said it was accidentally donated during a closet cleanout.
Grant’s jaw tightened.
“What else?”
“The mug.”
He almost laughed from disbelief.
Anna’s chipped ceramic mug.
Yellow.
The words WORLD’S OKAYEST MOM printed across the side.
Ellie used it to keep colored pencils.
Grant had not seen it in months.
“Where did they go?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask?”
Ellie nodded.
“What did she say?”
“That houses can’t be museums.”
Grant closed his eyes.
The phrase was his.
He had said it first.
A year after Anna died.
His mother, Evelyn, asked whether he planned to change anything in the house.
Grant had snapped that he could not keep every room frozen forever.
“Houses can’t be museums.”
Marissa must have remembered.
Worse.
Grant had given her the language.
He looked toward the refrigerator.
Family photographs covered one side.
Recent photographs.
Ellie’s first-grade picture.
Grant and Marissa in Italy.
The three of them skiing in Aspen.
Marissa at a foundation event.
Anna appeared nowhere.
Grant had not noticed.
He hated that.
“Why did Marissa put lunch in Otis’s bowl?”
Ellie became quiet again.
Grant did not rush.
Finally she whispered, “I ruined the video.”
“What video?”
“For tonight.”
Grant frowned.
The foundation gala included a short family film.
He knew that.
Marissa’s former public-relations firm had produced it.
Grant had recorded his section two weeks earlier.
He talked about the foundation’s work.
Anna’s vision.
Literacy programs.
Pediatric grief counseling.
The reason he expanded the foundation after losing her.