My daughter has started calling my apartment “Dad’s place”

Dear Delyara, My daughter used to call every house we lived in home. Since the divorce, she calls this apartment “Dad’s place.” She says it casually: “I left my shoes at Dad’s place,” or “Mom is picking me up from Dad’s place.” The words should not hurt. It is accurate. Still, every time she says them, I feel like a guest inside my own life. I have painted her room yellow, bought the same cereal she keeps at her mother’s house, and learned how to braid her hair badly enough that she now lets me practice. None of it has made this home in her mouth. Last weekend, she asked whether I would move back when Mom stopped being mad. I told her the divorce was permanent and not caused by anger alone. She cried and said permanent is a word adults use when they do not want children to keep asking. I had no answer. Tonight, her backpack is beside the door because her mother is coming in the morning. I am sitting in the living room listening to her sleep in the room I built for her, wondering how many nights a child must spend somewhere before the place becomes more than the address of one parent.