“Come here.” He scooped his younger daughter onto his lap and pulled her plate closer to his. Molly leaned into him, her head on his shoulder, strands of her hair clinging to his shirt.

“I miss Mommy.” She crawled onto him, clinging with arms and legs, weighed down by sadness.

“I know. We all do, and that’s okay.” He held her with one arm and stroked her leg with the other. “But we have each other and we are going to stick together like all the ingredients in this yummy burger your sister just made.”

“Can I stay on your lap?”

“Sure, although I might eat your burger by accident as well as my own. As long as you’re okay with that.” He was rewarded with a small laugh from his younger daughter.

Izzy was frantically rubbing the table even though the ketchup was long gone. Her cheeks were flushed and she kept blinking. Flora wanted to reach out and take that tense hand in hers, but she didn’t dare. Instead she glanced at Jack to see if he’d noticed the reaction of his elder daughter, but his focus was on the younger.

Flora wanted to disappear. This was all her fault.

“I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t—it was thoughtless.”

Molly spoke from the safety of Jack’s arms. “When your mommy died did you live with your daddy, like we do?”

Flora’s breathing was shallow. She just wanted the conversation to stop, but she was the one who had started it.

“I moved in with my aunt. She was my only family. I lived with her until I moved into a place of my own. She died last year.”

Izzy put her burger down. “You have no family? No one at all?”

Jack frowned. “Izzy—”

“I have lots of good friends,” Flora said, “and friends can be like family.” Except they weren’t. None of them seemed to fill that big, empty gap inside her. Her aunt hadn’t filled it, either. In some ways her aunt was the one who had made Flora aware of the big, empty gap. She’d done her duty and taken in a child, even though she’d never wanted children. Flora was constantly aware of her sacrifice. Guilt had shadowed her until the day she’d finally moved out.

“Like family,” Izzy said. “But not actually family.”

“Actual family have the same blood,” Molly said helpfully. “They’re related.”

Flora managed a smile of assent and met Izzy’s sharp gaze.

The girl said nothing more, but the message was clear.

Maybe Flora didn’t have a family of her own, but there was no way she was moving in on this one.

4

Izzy