So I let her decide how quickly we moved.
Sometimes she called me Emily.
Sometimes she stopped halfway through a sentence, searching for a word she wasn’t ready to use.
I never corrected her.
One afternoon, we visited Thomas Avery.
He lived in a modest house beside a stretch of pine woods.
He was seventy-two, with gentle eyes and large hands scarred by decades of woodworking.
When he opened the door, he looked from Vanessa to me.
Then he began crying.
“I wish we’d known,” he said.
I reached for his hand.
“I know.”
He invited us inside.
The walls were covered with photographs.
Vanessa as a newborn.
Vanessa on her first bicycle.
Vanessa holding a spelling-bee trophy.
Vanessa wearing a graduation gown.
A whole life I’d never seen.
Thomas noticed me studying the pictures.
“You can have copies of anything you want.”
I couldn’t answer.
