Everything I’d been holding together broke.
“Oh, Sophie.”
“I don’t.”
She said it quickly.
“I don’t want a different one.”
I pulled her closer.
“You never have to choose.”
She began crying quietly.
“I like hearing about her.”
“I know.”
“And him.”
“I know.”
“But I love you and Dad.”
My husband knelt beside us.
“We know.”
I kissed her hair.
“You can miss people you don’t remember. You can love them. You can ask about them every day if you want to. None of that takes anything away from us.”
She looked at me.
“Really?”
“Really.”
Mr. Harris was crying again.
And I understood why.
He had spent years believing loving the family he’d stayed with meant accepting that Isabella had chosen another one.
Sophie had spent years fearing that loving the family she’d lost might hurt the one she had.
Both had mistaken silence for something it wasn’t.
The next morning, Mr. Harris met Sophie at the school entrance.
She looked up at him.
“Do I call you Uncle Mr. Harris at school?”
He smiled.
“Probably not during assembly.”
“What about lunch?”
“We can negotiate.”
Mrs. Parker was waiting in the classroom.
She crouched beside Sophie’s desk.
“Sophie, I owe you an apology.”
Sophie watched her.
“I shouldn’t have called your photograph inappropriate. I should have asked you why it mattered to you.”
Sophie nodded.
Then Mrs. Parker asked, “Would you still like to use it for the project?”
Sophie looked at me.
“Can I use two?”
Mrs. Parker smiled.
“You can use as many as you need.”
Three weeks later, parents were invited to see the finished projects outside the classroom.
Twenty-three pieces of construction paper covered the wall.
I found Sophie’s immediately.
At the top, she’d written “MY FAMILY” in purple marker.
On the left was the beach photograph she’d originally chosen.
Sophie sat between my husband and me, all three of us sunburned and laughing.
On the right was the newspaper photograph of Isabella and Sophie’s biological father.
Below it was the picture of Richard holding her as a baby.
And beside that was a new photograph.
Sophie and Mr. Harris.
He was kneeling so they were the same height.
Both were smiling.
Both had the same dimple.
Mrs. Parker stood beside me.
“She worked on it for two days,” she said.
