I was chopping vegetables when my four-year-old daughter

bent down.

“What is it, sweetheart?”

She glanced toward the living room.

Then toward the hallway.

Then she leaned close to my ear.

“I don’t want to take the pills Grandma gives me every day anymore… Can I stop taking them?”

The world went silent.

Not the pan.

Not the traffic outside.

Not even my own breathing.

Only that sentence.

Pills.

Every day.

I dropped to continue reading …