So I made a decision right there on my bed with Lily in my arms. I called Rachel back and I told her Lily was staying with me. Not for the weekend. For good, until she figured out what kind of mother she wanted to be.

I told her I loved her and that I would help her with anything in this world, rent, counseling, whatever she needed, but I would not hand that baby back to a house with a closet in it.

She cried. She yelled. She told me I couldn’t do that, that I had no right. Maybe she’s correct, maybe legally I don’t, I don’t know how any of that works and I’m gonna find out this week. But I told her, “Rachel, she asked me what get rid of me means. Your daughter said those words to me at my kitchen table.” And the line just went quiet again.

Then Rachel said the thing I will carry to my grave. Real soft, almost like she was talking to herself. She said, “He’s different, Mom. You don’t understand.”

He’s different. Same words from March. Wouldn’t you know it.

Lily’s asleep in my spare room right now under the quilt I made for Rachel when she was little. She’s been here six days. She still asks about her mommy, and I tell her Mommy loves her and needs to fix some things, because what else do you say. Rachel called once, drunk I think, and hung up before I could really talk to her.

I keep the closet door in my hallway open now. All the way open. Lily noticed and asked me why, and I told her in this house we don’t close doors on people we love.

She thought about that for a second, real serious, and then she said, “Okay, Nana.” And she went back to coloring like it was nothing.

Bless her heart. I’m the one who can’t stop crying.

The first night she was here, she wouldn’t sleep with the bedroom door shut.

I went to close it like I always do, and she sat straight up. “Leave it open, Nana.” Real firm, for such a little thing. So I leave it open. I sit in the hall chair some nights till she drifts off, and I can hear her talking to that bunny, telling it the same thing I told her. “We don’t hide. We don’t have to be quiet here.”

Yesterday she found the hall closet and stood in front of it a long minute, just looking. I held my breath. Then she reached in, grabbed her bunny off the shelf where I’d set it, and shut the door herself. “Bunny doesn’t live in there anymore,” she told me. “He lives out with us.”

I said that’s right, baby. He sure does.