POV: Jasmine
The therapist's office had the same neutral light, the same quiet, the same careful distance between the two chairs. I had been here three times now. Each time it took me less time to start talking.
"She's been asking where he is," I said. "Every day. Sometimes twice. She asked Finn at bedtime. She asked me in the morning. She stands in the bedroom doorway and looks at his side of the bed."
Dr. Chen listened without interrupting.
"She won't go to the park unless he's coming. She sits on the couch with the rabbit from Italy and holds it and doesn't speak. She's not throwing tantrums. She's not crying. She's just — waiting. Like she thinks if she waits long enough, he'll walk through the door."
My voice stayed even. I had learned how to talk about Aurora's pain without letting my own take over the room.
"What have you been telling her?" Dr. Chen asked, her voice gentle but precise.
"That he's not here right now," I said. "Or some version of it. That he can't come today. That he's not coming tomorrow. I keep moving the answer forward, one day at a time, because I don't know how to say the permanent thing."
Dr. Chen nodded slowly. "You're protecting her from the word. And she keeps asking because the answer you're giving her leaves room for him to come back."
The sentence landed in my chest. I had known it for days — that every soft answer I gave Aurora was keeping her stuck in a loop I had built, that my gentleness was doing damage, that my daughter was waiting for a door to open because I had not told her it was locked.
"At her age," Dr. Chen said, leaning forward slightly, "she understands the world in very concrete terms. 'Not here' sounds temporary to her. 'Gone' is a place someone can come back from. She needs something she can hold on to — something honest, in her own language, that does not leave a door open."
I closed my eyes. "How do I say it?"
Dr. Chen's voice softened, but it did not retreat. "You start with what she already knows. You can say something like — you know how Daddy got very, very hurt in the car. His body was hurt so badly that the doctors could not fix it. And when a person's body cannot be fixed, it stops working. Papa's body stopped working, and that means he cannot come back to us."
She paused, letting me absorb it.
"You are not trying to make her understand death as a concept," she continued. "You are giving her one clear, simple truth she can return to. Something physical she can picture. Not sleeping. Not away. Not watching over her. His body stopped working. That is the anchor."
I gripped the arm of the chair. "She is a child."
"She is," Dr. Chen said. "And she is already living inside the confusion of not knowing. The confusion is harder on her than the truth will be."
I sat with that.
"She will ask again," Dr. Chen said. "Maybe the next day. Maybe an hour later. That is not a failure — it is how children her age process. Each time she asks, she is testing whether the answer is still the same. When it stays the same, she begins to absorb it. When it changes — when you soften it or redirect — she goes back to the beginning."
Every version of the answer I had given Aurora — every gentle redirect, every not today — had sent her back to the starting line.
I looked at my hands. "What else should I know?"
Dr. Chen held my gaze. "Avoid anything that connects death to something she does every day. If Daddy went to sleep — she will be afraid to go to sleep. If Papa went away — she will wait for him to come back. Keep it physical. Keep it clear."
She waited a beat.
"And do not tell her alone. Have the people she trusts around her. Not a crowd — the people who are already part of her daily life. If she sees the adults she loves sitting together and being calm while this is said, she learns that the truth is something you can survive. That is the most important thing you can teach her right now — not that it doesn't hurt, but that it hurts and you are all still here."
"What if I can't hold it together?" I asked, and heard the real question underneath the question.
"You do not have to hold it together," Dr. Chen said. "You have to be present. Those are different things. Let her be sad. If she cries, hold her. If she is angry, let her be angry. If she goes quiet, stay close. And let her see you feel it too. She needs to know that being sad about this is normal — that the adults around her are sad, and they are still here, still loving her."
The session ended. I thanked her. I walked out through the quiet hallway and sat in the car with the engine off and my hands on the steering wheel.
I turned the conversation over in my head. Not the exact words — those I would find when I was sitting in front of her. The shape of it. The honesty of it.
The fact that I was going to sit in front of my daughter and take apart the soft wall I had built around her, and underneath it she was going to find the thing I had been hiding, and it was going to hurt her in a way I could not prevent and could not fix.
I thought about Aurora in her bedroom doorway, looking at the empty side of the bed. I thought about her pulling the blanket to her chin and turning toward the wall.
I thought about the rabbit she carried everywhere now — the one from Italy, from the trip that was supposed to end with a wedding and instead ended with a funeral.
She had been waiting. Patiently, quietly, with complete faith that the world would eventually deliver what she needed. And I had let her wait because I was too afraid to be the one who told her it was not coming.
The fear of it sat in my stomach. But underneath the fear was something I had not expected — relief. Because the waiting was worse. The soft answers were worse. Aurora on the couch with her rabbit, watching the door, was worse than anything the truth would do.
I picked up my phone and called Finn.
He answered on the first ring. He always answered on the first ring now.
"Tomorrow evening," I said, and my voice had the quiet, steady weight of a decision that had already been made. "Dinner at the apartment. I need you and Asher both there."
He paused for one beat. "Okay. What's happening?"
"I know what to tell Aurora," I said.