There was someone standing near the far end of the garden.
A hambre.
Immobile.
Looking at me.
My heart stopped.
There was something familiar about the way he was standing.
Something I hadn’t seen in decades.
The man slowly advanced towards the light.
And as soon as I saw his face, a scream came out of me.
I held on to the side of the house to keep from falling.
“No…”
Graham was watching me carefully.
The man took another step forward.
My knees almost buckled.
It was impossible.
It wasn’t supposed to be there.
I wasn’t supposed to know where we lived.
And I definitely wasn’t supposed to know anything about Marissa.
I turned to Graham, barely able to breathe.
“OMG… how did you organize all this?”
But Graham didn’t respond.
The man who was in the dark did it.
And the moment he said my name, I realized that the “deal” Graham had mentioned had nothing to do with money.
It had nothing to do with the wedding.
And I hadn’t started with my daughter.
It had started with me.
My daughter, Marissa, was born with a large reddish birthmark that covered almost the entire side of her face.
When she was little, she didn’t care.
She danced in front of mirrors, posed for photos, and once told me that she liked her birthmark because it made her look “different from everyone else”.
Then school started.
The children stared.
Some whispered.
Others were cruel enough to say things directly to his face.
By the time Marissa reached adolescence, she had already learned to stand on one side in photos and turn her face slightly every time someone picked up a phone.
The confident girl I remembered became quieter.
Dating someone was even more difficult.
Marissa never took anyone home.
He never talked about boys.
Every time family members asked him if he had met anyone, he smiled politely and changed the subject.
Her biological father had disappeared when she was little, so for years I feared that he had somehow convinced himself that everyone would end up abandoning her.
Then Henry came into our lives.
