keep someone else comfortable.
I removed my shoes and sat between my children.
Eli grabbed one of my fingers.
Mira caught the sleeve of my blouse.
Graham looked over at me.
“Long day, Judge Ross?”
There was affection in it now, not secrecy.
I smiled.
“Very.”
Dana laughed.
“I still can’t believe Mom spent four years telling everyone you were unemployed.”
“She believed what was convenient,” I said.
Then Eli made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, and the conversation dissolved.
I looked down at the two babies Lorraine had tried to divide as if love could be allocated by arithmetic.
One boy.
One girl.
Neither a prize.
Neither compensation for someone else’s grief.
Neither belonging to anyone but themselves first, and entrusted to us second.
I had spent years believing silence was the price of peace.
The hospital taught me otherwise.
Sometimes silence is not peace at all.
Sometimes it is permission.
And I had finally stopped giving mine.
