And this time, Emma believed her.
Sophie spent nearly an hour looking through the photographs that evening.
She saw Lucas as a little boy, Helena standing beside her husband, and relatives whose names meant nothing to her.
For a moment, she wondered what her life might have been like if things had unfolded differently.
Would she have grown up surrounded by grandparents and cousins?
Would she have had a different surname?
Would anyone in that family have loved her?
Then she closed the album.
“I don’t want to meet them right now,” she said.
Emma nodded.
“That’s completely fine.”
“Maybe I’ll change my mind one day. Maybe I won’t.”
“You don’t have to decide today.”
Sophie looked at her mother for a long moment.
“I’m sorry you had to go through all of that when you were so young.”
Emma felt the familiar ache in her chest.
“Sometimes I wish I had been allowed to be thirteen a little longer.”
