Grandpa Walter helped me do that.
My parents had died when I was ten, and Grandpa had been the person who raised me afterward. When I told him about the pregnancy, he never once asked why Caleb had left before asking what I needed.
He drove me to appointments.
He assembled baby furniture.
He sanded an old wooden crib in his garage until every edge was smooth enough for him to run his palm across it without finding a single splinter.
When the ultrasound technician announced that I was having a girl, Grandpa cried harder than I did.
One afternoon, while painting the crib, he looked at me and said, “We’ll be fine, sweetheart. You, me, and this little girl. That’s more than enough family.”
I wanted desperately to believe him.
And eventually, I almost did.
Part 2 — Grandpa Saw Something I Didn’t
I turned onto Grandpa’s gravel driveway a little after four in the afternoon.
He was already sitting on the porch.s,
For nearly two weeks, he had spent every afternoon waiting there for word that Nora could come home.
The moment he spotted my car, he jumped up so quickly that his coffee mug fell from the arm of the rocking chair and shattered on the porch.
“There are my girls!”
At seventy-three, Grandpa wasn’t supposed to move that fast, but he came down the steps like a man twenty years younger.
When I lifted Nora from the car, his eyes immediately filled.
I smiled. “Ready to meet your great-granddaughter?”
He didn’t answer.
He simply stretched out his arms.
I placed her carefully against his chest.
For several seconds, Grandpa looked happier than I had ever seen him.
Then Nora opened her eyes.
Grandpa froze.
The joy on his face disappeared so suddenly that I thought something was wrong with the baby.
He shifted her slightly toward the afternoon light.
His gaze moved from Nora’s blue eye to her dark one.
Then he noticed her chin.
His hands began trembling.
“Emily.”
Something in his voice made my stomach tighten.
“What?”
He looked directly at me.
“Who is Nora’s father?”
I gave a confused laugh. “Grandpa, you know who he is. Caleb.”
Grandpa’s face went pale.
Just one name.
That was all it took.
He slowly sat down in the wicker chair, still holding Nora as though she were made of glass.
