Chapter 21 - isla called lucinda mom and elisa stopped speaking to her for two days
Isla was five.
Lucinda’s contact had expanded to supervised community visits.
Three hours twice a month.
Then one afternoon Isla came home holding a craft project.
“Mom helped me.”
Elisa froze.
I heard it from the kitchen.
“Who?”
Isla looked confused.
“Lucinda.”
Elisa’s face changed.
“Don’t call her that.”
The room went silent.
Isla looked at me.
Then Elisa.
“But she is.”
“No.”
“Elisa.”
My warning came too late.
“She hurt Daddy!”
Isla’s eyes filled.
“I know.”
“She hit me!”
“I know!”
Isla shouted.
“She’s still my mom!”
Elisa stared.
Then walked upstairs.
Door slammed.
Isla started crying.
I sat beside her.
“Did I do bad?”
“No.”
“Is Elisa mad because I love Mom?”
There it was.
Exactly the sentence I had tried to prevent.
“No.”
Then I corrected.
“She might be mad.”
Isla’s face crumpled.
“But your feeling is still allowed.”
I went upstairs later.
Elisa refused to open the door.
I knocked once.
“Space?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Wrong.
She opened immediately.
“You’re not gonna talk?”
“You said space.”
She looked annoyed.
Teenage logic approaching early.
She was twelve now.
“Why does Isla get to call her Mom?”
“Because Lucinda is her mother.”
“She doesn’t deserve it.”
The word deserve mattered.
“Maybe not in the way you mean.”
Elisa stared.
“Then why?”
“Because Mom isn’t an award.”
She looked angry.
“It’s a relationship word.”
“Isla decides what word fits her relationship.”
“She hit me.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t care?”
I almost laughed from pain.
“I care so much it makes some parenting decisions physically difficult.”
Elisa began crying.
“She gets everything.”
“What?”
“She gets Lucinda back.”
“She gets you.”
“She gets me.”
I understood.
The old fear.
Replacement.
Not dead.
Only older.
“You think Isla having a mother gives her more family than you.”
Elisa looked away.
Her mother had died when she was young.
The stuffed rabbit remained on her bed.
Lucinda had hurt Elisa.
Now Isla was gaining something Elisa could never regain.
A biological mother returning.
Messy.
Unfair.
“Elisa.”
She did not look.
“Being angry that Isla has something you miss does not make you bad.”
She started crying harder.
“I don’t want Lucinda.”
“I know.”
“I want Mom.”
There it was.
I held out my arms.
Elisa came.
At twelve, she still folded against me almost like seven.
“She would hate Lucinda.”
I stopped.
I could easily agree.
My late wife had been fiercely protective.
But dead people should not become convenient arguments.
“I don’t know what your mother would feel today.”
Elisa pulled back.
“You know.”
“I know how she loved you.”
“That’s different.”
She hated the answer.
Good.
Truth sometimes disappointed.
Two days later Elisa spoke to Isla again.
Not because I forced her.
She entered the playroom.
Isla looked nervous.
Elisa sat.
“You can call Lucinda Mom.”
Isla’s face brightened.
“But I don’t have to call her anything.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t make me talk about her.”
“Okay.”
Elisa nodded.
Then:
“I was mean.”
Isla shrugged.
“You’re always mean.”
Sisters.
Excellent.
They started arguing about crayons five minutes later.
I stood outside the room listening.
For years I had worried Lucinda would become the thing that divided my daughters.
Instead the harder truth was that they could have different relationships with the same person and still remain sisters.
May you like
No shared verdict required.
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