He led me to a shelf containing several photo albums.
Then he removed a small wooden box.
“Lillian saved these.”
Inside were birthday cards, hospital bracelets, and a photograph of a tiny baby wrapped in a yellow blanket.
My daughter.
Alive.
I touched the photograph with one fingertip.
For twenty-eight years, I’d never possessed an image of her living face.
Thomas sat beside me.
“She was a fighter,” he said.
“Tiny thing.
Loudest cry you’d ever heard.”
I laughed through my tears.
“That sounds wonderful.”
He smiled sadly.
“Lillian used to say she arrived in the world determined to be heard.”
I looked at Vanessa.
She was standing in the doorway, watching us.
I held out my hand.
She came and sat between us.
For the first time, there was no secret separating her two families.
Only love.
And grief for the years we could never recover.
Months later, after the financial proceedings had advanced and Mark’s criminal case had reached a negotiated resolution, I received a request to speak with him under controlled circumstances.
