Daisy must have been watching from the window because the front door opened before I even reached the porch.
She was wearing her pajamas and her hair was tangled from a night of restless sleep and crying.
She stared at me for a second to make sure I was real and then she ran toward me.
I dropped my bag and caught her on the sidewalk while she locked her arms around my neck with desperate force.
Her body shook against mine and her small fingers gripped my shirt as if she were afraid I might vanish.
“I have you now, and I am not going anywhere,” I whispered into her hair.
The world around us looked completely normal with neighbors walking dogs and sprinklers clicking on lawns.
Cruelty inside a family often looks like beautiful landscaping from the outside.
I pulled back to look at her face and asked if she had managed to eat anything yet.
“I am going to make you some breakfast, even if it ends up being the worst meal you have ever had,” I joked.
A small flicker of a smile crossed her face as she asked if it would be worse than the meal I made last Christmas.
Inside the house, I noticed that the foyer smelled like lemon cleaner and cinnamon.
There were three raincoats hanging on hooks for Patrick and Amber and Toby, but there was no coat for Daisy.
I saw the hallway gallery wall which was filled with framed family photographs that were meant to show warmth.
Toby was in almost every picture, but Daisy only appeared in two of the eleven frames on the wall.
One was a school portrait tucked away in a corner and the other was a Christmas photo where she stood behind the others.
“I do not like that one because I look like I am just visiting,” Daisy said as she stood beside me.
She was only eight years old and she already understood the vocabulary of exclusion perfectly.
I went into the kitchen and began to cook eggs while Daisy watched me from a stool at the counter.
The refrigerator was covered in magnets from various vacations that featured photos of Toby but never Daisy.
“Grandpa, I think you are burning the eggs,” she said as smoke began to rise from the pan.
I told her that I was simply creating a unique texture and she made a sound that was almost a laugh.
She ate the eggs quickly and I realized that she had been much hungrier than she was willing to admit.
I drank coffee from a mug that said World’s Best Dad and waited for her to speak when she was ready.