She found it on a Monday morning, in the gap under the bathroom door.
A piece of paper, folded once. Her name on the outside in her daughter's handwriting — the small, earnest handwriting of a seven-year-old who had recently and proudly learned to write in cursive.
She unfolded it.
There was a drawing at the bottom. A person — herself, apparently, identifiable by the curly hair — and a smaller person — Iris — standing beside her. Both smiling. The sun in the corner, as suns always are in drawings by seven-year-olds.
She sat on the edge of the bath and held the note.
She had not known Iris had noticed. She had been so careful. She had kept the sadness for the evenings, for the hours after bedtime, for the car. She'd thought she'd been managing.
She had been noticed anyway.
By a seven-year-old who had folded a note in half and pushed it under the bathroom door because she understood, in the wordless way of children who are paying attention, that sometimes the people you love need to know that you're seen.
She kept the note.
She kept going.
Love finds you in the small places. Let it.
