The thought did not announce itself. Did not arrive with the ceremony, such thoughts perhaps deserved. It simply was there. Already fully formed. Sitting in his chest with the weight of a thing that was going to be there for a long time.
"Daddy." Seren. He looked up.
She was standing over him with her face doing something he had never seen it do, not fear exactly, not the fear of a child who understood what was happening, but the prior stage of it. The stage of something is very wrong, and I don't know what it is, and I need you to tell me.
"Daddy, what's wrong?" Her voice is very small. Seb looked at his daughter.
At her face. At the eyes that were not his, looking down at him from the face of the person he had done everything correctly for and everything incorrectly around.
"Your grandmother passed away," he said.
The words came out quieter than he expected. Stripped of everything except the bare fact of them.
