“She left home when I was 16. I knew she got married. Years later, my father told me she’d had a baby girl.”
His voice broke.
“A girl named Sophie.”
I couldn’t speak.
Sophie could.
“Me?”
Mr. Harris nodded.
“You.”
She stared at him.
“Then what are you?”
The innocence of the question seemed to break something in him.
“I’m your uncle.”
Sophie looked at me, then back at him.
“My real uncle?”
“Your biological uncle,” I said carefully.
Then he immediately looked at me.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“No.” I squeezed Sophie’s hand. “Uncle is fine.”
Mr. Harris sat on the floor, no longer seeming to care that he was the principal.
“I’ve wondered where you were for seven years.”
That hit me harder than anything else.
“Wait.”
I looked at the clipping.
The half-visible face.
The name Harris.
And suddenly, I remembered something from years earlier.
A gray-haired man standing on our porch with a cardboard box.
“Oh, my God.”
Mr. Harris looked at me.
“Richard.”
“What?”
“I met your father.”
He stood so quickly the chair behind him scraped the floor.
“When?”
