“Her grandma asked me about Dad,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
Suddenly, it was like someone hit the mute button on the world.
“What about him?”
Maddie picked at a loose thread on her jeans.
“She asked where he was.”
“What did you say?”
“That I didn’t have one.”
Carol’s mother had frowned at that.
“Everybody has one,” she’d said.
“What about him?”
So Maddie explained.
He left before she was born.
Then the woman asked one simple question.
“Do you miss him?”
Maddie had laughed. “I can’t. I never knew him.”
The woman had looked confused.
“That’s not what I asked, dear.”
“Do you miss him?”
***
I sat beside my daughter.
Maddie still wouldn’t look at me.
“People always say it,” she whispered. “‘At least you never knew him.’ ‘You can’t miss somebody you don’t remember.’ Even you say it sometimes, Mom.”
I was speechless.
Maddie finally looked at me.
