Her face tightened.
“Is that why you wanted us?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
So I tried again.
“The first time I saw you, you reminded me of her. It scared me.”
Emma looked down.
“But then you started talking.”
She glanced at me.
“You told Dylan that dinosaurs would beat sharks because sharks couldn’t climb stairs.”
A tiny smile appeared.
“And after that, you were just Emma.”
Her smile faded again.
“Then why did you want us?”
“Because all 6 of you belonged together.”
I paused.
“And because after I got to know you, I wanted the chance to become part of your family.”
Not replace mine.
Become part of yours.
That difference mattered.
Years passed.
There were braces, broken phones, school concerts, terrible grades, better grades, slammed doors, birthdays, stomach bugs, late-night talks, and endless rides across town.
Then one afternoon, someone shouted from upstairs.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
I answered without thinking.
Then I froze.
I didn’t even know which child had called me.
That night, I wrote on a scrap of paper:
Somebody called me Mom today.
I folded it and kept it in my dresser.
Now, 10 years later, Thomas Reed sat in my living room while Rebecca Lawson’s children watched me open her letter.
The first line read:
Dear Julia,
I don’t know whether you remember me, but I remember you.
I looked at Mr. Reed.
“How?”
“Keep reading.”
Rebecca explained that our children had attended the same elementary school.
We were never friends, but she had seen me several times at school events.
One incident stayed with her.
One of her sons had accidentally knocked over a display.
Another parent snapped, “You have 6 children. You’d think you’d know how to control them.”
Apparently, I had stepped in.
“He’s a kid,” I’d said. “Kids knock things over.”
I barely remembered it.
Rebecca had.
Then she wrote about Sophie.
One afternoon, Sophie had torn a card Lucas made because she was angry with him.
Rebecca had seen me kneel in front of her.
“You’re allowed to be mad at your brother,” I’d said. “But being angry doesn’t give you permission to be cruel.”
