“No,” I said. “You might get in trouble. You might lose TV. But you won’t be sent back. You’re ours.”
She nodded, but she watched us for weeks, waiting for the moment we’d change our minds.
“You are not a monster.”
School was rough. Kids noticed. Kids said things.
One day, she got in the car with red eyes and her backpack clenched like a shield. “A boy called me ‘monster face,'” she muttered. “Everyone laughed.”
I pulled over. “Listen to me,” I said. “You are not a monster. Anyone who says that is wrong. Not you. Them.”
She touched her cheek. “I wish it would go away.”
“I know,” I said. “And I hate that it hurts. But I don’t wish you were different.”
“Do you know anything about my other mom?”
She didn’t answer. She just held my hand the rest of the drive, small fingers tight around mine.
We never hid that she was adopted. We used the word from the start, without whispering it like a secret.
“You grew in another woman’s belly,” I told her, “and in our hearts.”
When she was 13, she asked, “Do you know anything about my other mom?”
“We know she was very young,” I said. “She left no name or letter. That’s all we were told.”
“So she just left me?”
“I don’t think you forget a baby you carried.”
“We don’t know why,” I said. “We only know where we found you.”
