When my daughter came home from a quiet weekend at her grandmother’s house, she said something that stopped my heart.
“My brother lives at Grandma’s,” she told me in an almost casual voice. “But it’s a secret.”
We only have one child.
She does not have a brother.
So when she began setting aside toys “for him,” I knew I had to find out what my mother-in-law was hiding.
My name is Rachel. I’ve been married to my husband, Daniel, for eight years. We have one child, a five-year-old daughter named Ava, who fills every corner of our house with noise, questions, and relentless curiosity.
She talks from the moment she wakes up until the second she falls asleep. She narrates her cereal choices. She interrogates the dog. She asks why the sky changes colors and whether ants have families.
Life with Ava is rarely quiet, but it is full.
