not convinced I had been abandoned.
My mother had been wrong about some things. Claire had been wrong about others. Samuel had waited too long. I had spent too many years believing that needing help made me weak.
But love, I was beginning to understand, was not always clean or wise or perfectly timed.
Sometimes it was a letter hidden in a book.
Sometimes it was a key kept through years of hardship.
Sometimes it was a child’s hug on church steps.
And sometimes it was a man standing in
