Children say the damnedest things, don't they? I am driving. Mo Chroi is at work, and I have custody of her two children, Echo and Tithonus. I am leaving her driveway after picking them up. Echo, ten, sits in the passenger seat. Tithonus is keeping himself busy in the back with a piece of colouring paper he left there the last time he was in the car, a couple days before. The ride starts as such rides always do. I ask after them, after their schooling. I make sure they've been taking time to clean up the house, and have made time to spend with their mother who has needed them now as much as ever. Echo is the darling of my eye, at 10 the age where we can connect and relate better than at any time in the four years I've been blessed with knowing her. She has a very keen intellect, one I encourage and foster. We speak -as best we are able- about world affairs and events, not just the parochial world of her visible surroundings. Echo siezes on what she learns, silent for a time as she digests it before asking for more. But after my initial battery of questions and easy conversation, I ask them if I might have a few moments of quiet. My heart is heavy in my chest, my breath comes with labour alone, for Mo Chroi and I are dying. The pain of the moment, the reminder of what I have lost, overcomes me, but I hold together long enough to get to our destination, a new store a relative is opening. I am there for some (admittedly limited) computer work. I distract myself with the busywork before me, and then after that the quick run to the grocery, before I am overcome. Echo stares at me, pain dimpled in the smooth skin of her youth. "Please don't cry, Saint. Because then I'll cry, too." Echo knows. She tells me that she has known since they left that they would never return, that her mother had told her so, but she has held on to hope as I have. I am honest with her, although I take pains not to say too much. But it has been a long week, and despite the passing of days it does not feel any shorter. I grip the wheel tightly, merging onto the main road from the grocery, taking them home. And then... the first rivulet appears. I do not know which eye turned traitor first, but the other immediately joins its mate. Tithonus, her autistic seven-year-old, is silent in the back. Even his usual battery of questions and interruptions have taken pause in the moment. "Saint?" she asks quietly, looking at me with her luminous eyes. "Yeah, baby?" I say, resting my right hand on her knee. "I'd die for you." The restraint I'd tried to hold together shatters. I no longer make pretense of covering my face, or looking out my window as we are parked at the light. My eyes, at last, spill forth shamelessly. "I'd... I'd die for you too, baby," I whisper. In the back, Tithonus raises his hand and signs me I love you with his thumb, pointer, and pinkie outstretched. The light turns green. I pull ahead. Children say the damnedest things, don't they? | 
