A Walk Down the Aisle. Holly Jacobs

I was so grateful to you for choosing us. I spent days writing them. Picking out pictures. But I never told you her name or ours because I was afraid. She’s mine. Every time I mailed out a letter, I’d be sick with worry that you’d realized how much you gave up and come to get her, but that didn’t stop me from writing down all the details I thought you wanted to hear. I needed to prove to you that you were right to choose us. But it scared me to death.”

      “So that’s why no names?” Sophie asked. All she’d ever known her daughter as was Baby Girl. Every year, after she read Gloria’s letter, she’d write her Baby Girl a letter in response. She could have sent them to Tori through the agency, but frankly, pouring her heart out to her child didn’t seem fair. At some point, she’d give her daughter the box of letters. Maybe it would help answer her questions.

      “I know. Not even her first name. That was cruel.” Gloria leaned into Dom with a real need to touch him evident in her expression.

      “No. You were so generous sharing her moments. When I received that first letter chronicling all those milestones in her first year...” Sophie fought to hold back the tears. “For weeks, I read it every day. I can recite the letter to you word for word. But at some point, I knew I couldn’t go on that like that. So, I put it away. And each year, when you sent the new letter, along with the pictures, I’d read it through, then I’d reread all the old ones. I’d write my response and put it away, as well. I gave myself one full day to appreciate them, to look at Tori and marvel at her. Then I’d put the box away and would go back to living my life. You provided that one letter to me and then went back to being her mother. I get that. You wanted to keep her safe.”

      “But I failed. I hurt her by not listening to Dom.”

      Maybe Sophie could see Gloria’s guilt because it mirrored her own. She saw it and recognized that they didn’t simply share a love for Tori, but also the guilt that came from wondering if they’d done the right thing.

      Dom squeezed his wife tighter into the protection of his arm. “You can’t know if things would have been better or worse if we’d told her. The fact is we didn’t. The two of us. And now we have to deal with the repercussions. The three of us. We have to forget about blame and guilt. We need to figure out what to do for Tori. She’s in pain, and we need to decide how best to help her.”

      Sophie looked at these two people who’d been parents to her daughter, and a sense of peace swept through her pain and guilt. No matter what she’d done, she’d found her daughter wonderful parents. “I’ll do whatever you both think is best. She’s your daughter. I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten that.”

      “Thank you.” Gloria studied her a moment, then repeated, “Thank you. So what do we do now?”

      “No,” Tori shouted from the doorway into the living room. “I’ve decided that I’m not going to sit outside and let the three of you decide my fate. Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m staying with Sophie for a while. Think of it as summer camp.”

      “Victoria Peace Allen—” Gloria stuttered to an abrupt halt, as if she couldn’t think of what to say next.

      Sophie realized that she now knew her daughter’s full name. And on the heels of that thought came a single word...Peace?

      Dom must have seen the look because he nodded and said, “Peace.” He started to laugh. Gloria, then Tori, started laughing, as well.

      “Dad’s a hippie. A commune-living, vegan-eating hippie,” Tori supplied. “So are Nana and Papa.”

      Dom shook his head and clarified, “My parents were the hippies. I’m merely the son of hippies.” He turned to Sophie and explained, “Gloria picked Tori’s first name. I got to the pick the second. My name’s actually Freedom Jay Allen.”

      “Which is why I call him Dom,” Gloria said with a sniff.

      Despite everything that had happened that day, the shock layered onto pain, layered onto utter confusion, Sophie found herself smiling.

      “And you grew up in a commune?” she asked.

      “Well, like any child, I lived where my parents decreed.”

      “Nana and Papa never decreed a thing in their whole lives.” Tori turned to Sophie. “They don’t live on a commune anymore. They run a CSA in Pennsylvania.”

      “CSA?” Sophie asked.

      “Community-supported agriculture. Basically, people buy shares of their farm’s crops. They’re still hippies,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper.

      For a moment, all four of them were quiet. And slowly, the leftover smiles faded, and Tori stared at the three adults. “I get it, you know. I get what you meant, Sophie. They’re my parents. They’ve raised me. Nana and Papa are my grandparents. They all know me. They were there when I took my first step and started school.” She turned to her parents. “I get that. And I love you both. Nothing will ever change that. You are my parents. But you need to understand, I can’t leave until I know...”

      “Know what?” Sophie asked. “I swear, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.”

      “I don’t know, but I need to figure it out. I need to work it out in my head. If you try to make me leave before I do, I’ll run away again.”

      “No threats,” Sophie repeated. “Remember?”

      “I can’t go home without knowing.”

      There was desperation in Tori’s voice. Sophie couldn’t decide if Tori was desperate for answers or desperate to be understood.

      Maybe both.

      She wanted to go hug her daughter. But she knew she’d been right when she’d told Tori that Gloria and Dom were her parents. She watched them both pull Tori onto the couch between them and wrap their arms around her.

      And that moment solidified the knowledge that she’d done the right thing. All those years ago, as she had read letters from people asking for a baby, she’d seen Gloria and Dom, and a feeling of rightness had settled over her. She’d known these were her daughter’s parents. And they were.

      “Here’s what I suggest,” Dom finally said. “The three of us are going to go—”

      “I meant it, Dad,” Tori interrupted, her anger back in place.

      Dom shot her a look that shut her up and he continued, “We’ll go find a hotel for the night. The three of us can discuss things, then tomorrow morning, the four of us will meet for breakfast someplace neutral and decide how we’re going to handle this.”

      “By this, he means me,” Tori informed Sophie.

      Sophie found herself agreeing to Dom’s plan with gratitude. She called JoAnn, who had two rooms available at her B and B. “It’s only a few blocks away,” she assured the worried-looking Tori. “And why don’t we meet at the diner for breakfast? You name the time.”

      They agreed on ten.

      As the family walked to the door, Tori turned and said, “I’m sorry about the wedding.”

      Remembering an old saying, Sophie told her daughter, “It will all come out in the wash.”

      “Wedding?” Gloria asked.

      “Today was her wedding, Mom,” Tori admitted, shamefaced. “I objected.”

      Tori’s parents started talking, but Sophie interrupted. “Tori, of all the things you need to worry about right now, that’s not it. If anything, you should sympathize with Colton. He didn’t know about you, kind of like you didn’t know about me. Sometimes people keep secrets out of malice, but sometimes, they keep them because that secret’s simply too hard to talk about. Losing you...well, if I had to talk about it every day, I don’t know that I’d have made it. And I’m sure your mom didn’t think of you as anything but her daughter. Trying to explain there was another facet to that...” She