This time, we agreed without hesitation.
Lily woke at six twenty in the morning and announced that she wanted pancakes.
Not answers.
Not financial records.
Not explanations of why her parents had stopped living together.
Pancakes.
Her hair stood in every direction.
One sock had vanished.
She sat in the middle of the hotel bed holding her rabbit and looked at me with complete faith that breakfast would happen because breakfast always happened.
“Chocolate chips?” she asked.
“You ate chocolate chips yesterday.”
“So?”
I stared at her.
She stared back.
I laughed.
It was the first laugh that felt like mine in weeks.
“Fine. But fruit too.”
“Strawberries.”
“If they have them.”
“They have them.”
“You seem very confident.”
She nodded gravely.
“Hotels have strawberries.”
Apparently four-year-olds possessed international hospitality knowledge I did not.
