“And he never came to see me?”
“He didn't believe he had the right.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The little girl standing beside Julian was smiling.
“Who's the child?”
“His daughter. Lucy.”
My heart lurched.
Thomas had a granddaughter.
My husband had lived long enough to know a granddaughter.
And I had spent those same years believing we had no children or grandchildren.
I pressed a hand over my mouth.
“How old?”
“Eleven.”
I began crying again.
Mr. Harrison reached toward me, then stopped.
“Margaret, there's something you should know about that little girl.”
I looked up.
“What?”
“She called Thomas Grandpa.”
The words struck me harder than the birth certificate.
I remembered Thomas returning home one afternoon carrying a small wooden birdhouse.
He'd said a young girl at one of his charity programs had made it for him.
I'd laughed because it was painted bright purple.
Thomas had placed it in our garden.
