He was a decent man with a steady job, a quiet personality, and a tendency to solve emotional problems by finding something practical to do. If Claire was worried, he'd repair a cabinet. If she was upset, he'd clean the kitchen. He wasn't always good at expressing what he felt, but I never doubted that he loved my daughter.
When Lily was born, Daniel became a devoted father.
He learned to braid hair from internet videos, attended school activities whenever he could, and once spent an entire weekend building a wooden dollhouse that Lily abandoned after three days in favor of the cardboard box it came in.
Claire teased him mercilessly.
I can still picture the three of them in my kitchen, Lily sitting on Daniel's shoulders while Claire pretended to supervise dinner.
Those were the photographs I looked at after my daughter died.
They were proof that our family had once been whole.
Claire's illness progressed faster than any of us expected. There were hospital visits, treatment decisions, moments of hope, and terrible conversations we tried to have without frightening Lily. Through it all, Daniel remained beside his wife.
When Claire died, Lily had just turned six.
The little girl didn't fully understand why her mother wasn't coming home.
At the funeral, she wore a white cardigan and held my hand so tightly that my fingers ached. She asked whether her mother could hear the music. Later, when people began leaving, she looked toward the church doors and asked whether we were going to pick Mommy up.
I remember kneeling in front of her, unable to find words that could make death understandable to a child.
Daniel stood nearby.
His face looked empty.
We both loved Lily desperately.
But grief made us strangers to each other.
During the first few months after Claire's death, Daniel and I tried to maintain a familiar routine.
Lily came to my house on Sundays. I picked her up from school occasionally, helped with homework, and took her to the little park where Claire had once played as a child.
Some afternoons, Daniel joined us for dinner.
Other times, he looked too exhausted to do anything except collect his daughter and drive home.
I understood.
I was exhausted too.
But after a while, the visits became less frequent.
Daniel began working longer hours. He was a project estimator for a commercial construction company, and his job sometimes required travel to neighboring cities. He had always been reliable, but after Claire died, he seemed to bury himself in work.