Chapter 35
She read it once.
Then again.
“The baby I held was not my daughter.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“No one knows that yet,” I said.
“Daniel knew.”
“He suspected.”
“No. He wrote the real Anna was moved.”
Sofia looked at Victor.
“Father gave me someone else’s child.”
Victor crouched beside her.
“We will find out who.”
“What happened to that baby?”
“We’ll find out.”
“And Anna?”
“We’ll find her too.”
Sofia shook her head.
“You don’t understand. I spent my whole life looking for the face in that photograph.”
Victor took her hand.
“Then we start again.”
She looked at him.
Years of anger, grief, and absence passed between them without words.
At last, Sofia closed her fingers around his.
I watched them and thought of my mother.
All her life, Elena had carried the truth alone because she believed secrecy was protection.
Perhaps it had protected me.
But it had also left everyone trapped inside separate versions of the same loss.
I looked at Lily.
“I don’t want this for her,” I said.
Victor turned.
“What?”
“Secrets passed down until no one remembers why they started.”
Sofia wiped her eyes.
“Neither do I.”
“Then no more half-truths.”
Victor nodded.
“No more.”
Sofia nodded too.
It was not trust.
Not yet.
But it was a beginning.
The doctor arrived at the doorway to check Lily. Her fever had continued to fall.
“She needs rest,” he said. “And so do you.”
May you like
For the first time since the daycare called, I believed she would be all right.
I held her close as we left the blue room.
