thought the hardest part of losing my daughter was never knowing why she’d walked away. I was wrong, because when I finally found her again, the truth waiting for me was far more painful than the silence.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I scrolled through Facebook, and then the screen froze me in place.
Laurel. My Laurel. In a white dress, laughing beside a man I’d never seen before.
I swiped, and there she was again, cradling a newborn baby girl against her chest.
My daughter had gotten married! I was a grandmother! And no one had told me!
A man I’d never seen before.
The phone slipped from my fingers and hit the couch cushion. For a long moment, I just sat there in the quiet living room, listening to the clock on the mantel that Grant had wound that morning.
***
For seventeen years, it had been just the two of us. Laurel and me. Her father died before she was old enough to remember him, and I raised her alone through scraped knees, school plays, and whispered talks under her bedroom ceiling stars.
It had been just the two of us.