I couldn’t speak.
Sophie could.
“Me?”
Mr. Harris nodded.
“You.”
She stared at him.
“Then what are you?”
The innocence of the question seemed to break something in him.
“I’m your uncle.”
Sophie looked at me, then back at him.
“My real uncle?”
“Your biological uncle,” I said carefully.
Then he immediately looked at me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No.” I squeezed Sophie’s hand. “Uncle is fine.”
Mr. Harris sat on the floor, no longer seeming to care that he was the principal.
“I’ve wondered where you were for seven years.”
That hit me harder than anything else.
“Wait.”
I looked at the clipping.
The half-visible face.
The name Harris.
And suddenly, I remembered something from years earlier.
A gray-haired man standing on our porch with a cardboard box.
“Oh, my God.”
Mr. Harris looked at me.
“Richard.”
“What?”
“I met your father.”
He stood so quickly the chair behind him scraped the floor.
“When?”
“When Sophie was a baby.”
The memory returned clearly.
My husband and I had only recently learned Sophie would be staying with us permanently.
Richard had called first and asked if he could bring a box containing things that had belonged to Isabella and Sophie’s father.
He stayed maybe twenty minutes.
He looked exhausted.
Before leaving, he rested one hand on the box.
“Give these to her when she’s old enough to ask,” he’d said.
Then he looked at baby Sophie sleeping in my husband’s arms.
“Just don’t let her grow up thinking they didn’t love her.”
I’d remembered those words for years.
I’d simply forgotten his surname.
Mr. Harris covered his mouth.
“My father knew where she was.”
“Yes.”
“He never told me.”
The hurt in his voice was unmistakable.
Then he looked at Sophie, and his expression softened.
“I knew you survived,” he told her. “Dad told me you were safe and that a family was taking care of you. I wanted to find you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“He asked me not to.”
Sophie frowned.
“Why?”
Mr. Harris paused.
“He said you’d already lost your mom and dad. He didn’t want strangers appearing and frightening the people taking care of you. He told me that when you were older, there would be time.”
He smiled sadly.
“I suppose he thought we had more of it.”
Richard died three years later.
Mr. Harris had known Sophie existed as a baby, but never learned the name she’d been given after her adoption or where Richard had found her new family.
And I’d never known the quiet older man on our porch had a son who would eventually become principal of Sophie’s elementary school.
Sophie tugged my sleeve.
“Mom?”
I looked down.
“Is the box still there?”
My stomach tightened.
“Yes.”
“Can I see it?”
I knew she meant everything inside, not just the clipping.
I’d shown Sophie the box before and let her see a few photographs, but I’d never allowed her to go through it herself.
I kept telling myself I was waiting until she was old enough to ask.
The truth was, she’d been asking for years.
Did my first mommy have brown eyes?
Did she like swimming?
Was my first daddy funny?
I’d answered whatever I could.
I’d simply decided those questions didn’t count.
I thought I was protecting her from grief she was too young to understand.
Maybe I’d really been protecting myself from a conversation I didn’t know how to have.
“We’ll look tonight,” I said.
Sophie hesitated.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
Mrs. Parker finally spoke.
“I didn’t realize what the clipping was.”
Sophie looked at her.
Mrs. Parker’s face reddened.
“I saw the article about the accident and thought it wasn’t appropriate to display something about two people dying beside the other children’s family photographs.”
