I stepped aside.
“I think she needs her mother.”
Mia immediately moved toward her daughter.
The baby was finally back in her mother’s arms.
That evening, Sophie and I sat together at the kitchen table.
“Your father never knew about Mia,” I told her. “Neither did I.”
Sophie began to cry.
“I spent the whole summer lying to you. I thought I was protecting everyone.”
I reached across the table and took her hand.
“I know.”
For the first time, the mystery surrounding the summer was finally gone.
But Daniel’s story wasn’t finished with us yet.
A few nights later, I found Mia sitting in the den, holding an old photograph of Daniel when he was twenty-five.
“Sophie gave me this,” she said quietly. “She thought I should know what he looked like.”
She smiled faintly.
“She told me he used to hum whenever he was nervous.”
I laughed softly.
“Constantly. And always the wrong tune.”
Mia smiled.
And when she did, I saw something unmistakably familiar—the crooked corner of Daniel’s smile.
For years, I had thought of Daniel’s betrayal as something that permanently divided my life into before and after.
But now I understood something I hadn’t been ready to accept.
