I looked down at the clipping.
At the half-face.
At the name Harris.
And suddenly I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years.
A man standing on our porch.
Gray hair.
A cardboard box in his hands.
“Oh, my God.”
Mr. Harris looked at me.
“Richard.”
“What?”
“I met your father.”
He stood so quickly that the chair behind him scraped across the floor.
“When?”
“When Sophie was a baby.”
I could see the porch again.
My husband and I had only recently learned Sophie would be staying with us permanently.
Richard had called first.
He’d asked if he could bring us a box of things that had belonged to Isabella and Sophie’s father.
He hadn’t stayed long.
Maybe 20 minutes.
He’d seemed exhausted.
Older than he probably was.
Before he left, he’d placed one hand on the box.
“Give these to her when she’s old enough to ask,” he’d said.
Then he’d 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 that sentence for years.
I’d forgotten his surname.
Mr. Harris covered his mouth.
“My father knew where she was.”
“Yes.”
“He never told me.”
There was hurt in his voice now.
Then he looked at Sophie, and the hurt 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 took a moment before answering.
“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 gave a sad smile.
“I suppose he thought we had more of it.”
Richard died three years later.
Mr. Harris had known Sophie as a baby.
He had never known the name she’d been given after her adoption.
Or where Richard had found her new family.
And I had never known that the quiet older man on our porch had a son.
A son who would one day 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 immediately what she meant.
Not the clipping.
Everything else.
I’d shown Sophie the box before.
She knew it held things that had belonged to her first parents, and over the years I’d let her look at a few of the photographs inside.
But I’d never let her go through it herself.
I’d kept telling myself I was waiting until she was old enough to ask.
The truth was, she’d been asking for years.
Not once, dozens of times.
