I could hear the excitement in her voice.
“She loves drawing. She asks a million questions. And she has the cutest little smile.”
I was happy for her.
Genuinely happy.
After everything she’d endured, my sister finally had a chance to become a mother.
Two weeks before she appeared at my door with that mysterious envelope, Ellie’s adoption
was finalized.
Nora and Tom brought their daughter home.
They decorated her bedroom with pink curtains and soft blankets.
They bought coloring books, stuffed animals, and little baskets for her toys.
I helped Nora arrange everything.
She couldn’t stop smiling.
For the first time in years, the sadness that had followed her seemed to lift.
During Ellie’s first day at home, Nora called me six times.
“Claire, do five-year-olds still need naps?”
“Is it normal for her to ask the same question over and over?”
“How do I get paint out of a cotton dress?”
I laughed.
“You’re doing fine, Nora.”
She sounded so relieved.
But when I first met Ellie, something happened that I wasn’t prepared for.
She had thick dark curls.
Large brown eyes.
And a tiny dimple in her left cheek.
The exact same place where I had a dimple as a child.
Nora noticed the resemblance
too.
“Look at her, Claire!” she said excitedly. “She almost looks like she belongs in our family.”
I smiled.
But something tightened inside my chest.
Ellie was five years old.
The same age Lucy would have been.
I had spent years imagining what my daughter might look like.
And suddenly, standing in my sister’s living room, was a little girl who resembled those dreams.
I managed to remain cheerful through our visit.
But afterward, when I got into my car, I cried.
Not because I resented Nora’s happiness.
I didn’t.
I was grateful she’d found Ellie.
I simply missed the daughter I’d never been able to raise.
As the days passed, Ellie began growing attached to me.
She called me Auntie Claire.
Whenever I visited, she’d bring me two colorful hair ribbons.
“Can you do my hair?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
“Two pigtails,” she’d insist. “Not one braid.”
I’d laugh.
“Yes,
ma’am.”
“And don’t pull too hard!”
“I’ll be careful.”
She’d climb onto a kitchen chair, swinging her little legs while I divided her curls.
