“You Were Chosen This Morning”
Then came the teenage years.
Whenever one of the girls made it through something difficult, I would quietly remind her:
“You were chosen this morning.”
Both of them would roll their eyes the way teenagers do whenever they hear something they secretly need to hear.
They never admitted how much it meant.
But I knew.
Whenever they asked about Claire, I always gave the same answer.
“Your mother made a choice she thought she needed to make. I made a different one.”
I never called their mother names. I never turned her into a villain. I simply told the truth as gently as I knew how.
What I never told them was about the box.
That story would have to wait.
