Her eyes filled.
“I spent the entire summer lying to you. I thought I was protecting everyone.”
I reached across the table and took her hand.
“I’m sorry, Mom.”
“I know.”
Then she leaned against me.
And I held her.
For a while, I thought that was the final difficult secret Daniel had left behind.
A few nights later, Mia proved me wrong.
I found her sitting quietly with an old photograph in her hands.
Daniel was about twenty-five in the picture.
Young.
Smiling.
Completely unaware of everything that would come afterward.
“Sophie gave me this,” Mia said.
“She thought I should know what he looked like.”
I sat beside her.
“She told me he used to hum whenever he was nervous.”
I laughed softly.
“Constantly.”
Mia smiled.
“Was he any good?”
“Terrible. He almost never hummed the right tune.”
She laughed.
And for one strange second, I saw Daniel in the crooked corner of her smile.
It hurt.
But differently than before.
Daniel had betrayed me.
That would always be true.
But he had also been Sophie’s father.
And without ever knowing it, he had been Mia’s father too.
Those truths were complicated.
Painful.
Messy.
But I was finally beginning to understand that one truth didn’t have to erase another.
