Chapter 14 - We Moved Anyway
We moved to Cincinnati the following summer.
Not to punish anybody.
I accepted the job.
Ryan kept his remote position.
Lily had a backyard with a maple tree and a bedroom two doors from ours.
David asked whether the move meant he would never see his granddaughter.
Ryan answered:
“It means visits require trust.”
David did not argue.
For the first time in his life, maybe he understood that access was not something fathers and grandparents received simply because they wanted it.
He began individual therapy.
Ryan met him occasionally.
Without Lily at first.
I did not manage that relationship.
David had helped erase Susan.
Ryan had to decide what accountability meant between father and son.
That was not mine to solve.
On Lily’s first birthday, Karen came from Kentucky.
She brought one photograph.
Susan holding infant Ryan.
He was laughing.
Ryan stared at it.
“I've never seen this.”
Karen smiled sadly.
“She had hundreds.”
We placed the photograph in Lily’s baby book.
Not because Susan had become a saint after death.
We knew enough to understand she had struggled.
She had experienced postpartum depression.
She had been overwhelmed.
She had made mistakes.
None of those facts justified replacing her life with a lie.
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That distinction became important in our family.
A mother did not need to be perfect to deserve the truth.
