“Ms. Marian, will you take my daddy away from me?”
The question came softly—so softly that at first Marian almost thought she’d imagined it.
Isabella sat cross-legged on the carpet between scattered dolls and tiny plastic furniture, her small fingers carefully brushing a doll’s hair as if the world were perfectly ordinary. Her eyes stayed on her toys, her voice light and almost casual, as though she were asking about the weather.
But Marian felt it instantly.
The weight behind the words.
Her breath caught in her chest, sharp and sudden, and for a moment she couldn’t speak. Her heart cracked open—not loudly, not dramatically—but in that quiet, devastating way that came when a child voiced a fear too big for her small body to carry.
Because Isabella wasn’t just asking a question.
She
