I began to cry too. “Oh, Whitney, I’m sorry. I know I can never understand exactly what you’re going through. You’re right. I grew up here in this wonderful, warm home with two adoring parents, and it’s a place I feel safe and loved. I guess I was hoping it could be that for you too, because honey, you are safe and loved. I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you.”

“You don’t mean that,” she bawled. “You say it and say it and say it, but if you meant it, you wouldn’t be with anyone else. You’re no better than Daddy.”

“Whitney, that’s not—” But I stopped. I’d been about the say fair, but I realized at that moment that fairness was beside the point. Reason played no role in the emotional storm raging inside her head. And when I looked at her, I knew in my heart and soul I would do anything to make her feel safe, no matter what it took. I was a mother first and foremost, and the needs of my children would always come before my own.

That was the difference between me and their father.

“Okay, Whitney. If you’re not ready for me to be more than Henry’s friend, I won’t.”

“Just get out and leave me alone,” she whimpered, throwing herself face down on her bed and wailing into her pillow.

Wiping my own tears, I sat beside her, relieved when she let me. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You’re stuck with me, love.” I rubbed her back the way she’d always liked as a child. “That’s what being family means.”

She cried hard for a few minutes—huge, racking sobs that made her shoulders shudder and soaked her pillow. Finally, they subsided, replaced with less violent weeping, but the sight and sound of it still broke what was left of my heart.

“W-wasn’t D-Daddy family?” she sputtered. “He st-still left.”

“That’s true,” I said. “But I was raised to believe that family sticks around. Family shows up. Family has your back. At least mine does.”

She flipped around so that her head was in my lap, and I brushed the hair off her forehead. I was dying to mop up her face, but didn’t want to wreck whatever accord we might’ve arrived at. Her tears slowed, and her breathing returned to normal, except for the occasional hiccup. “I don’t really want to move to Arizona,” she confessed.

“I don’t blame you.”

Her arms circled my waist. “I want to stay here with you and Keaton and have our new house. I want it to be just us.”

I swallowed hard. I knew what she meant. “Okay.”

She closed her eyes, and eventually even her hiccups ceased. “Mommy?”

The name brought the lump back to my throat. “Yes?”