My chest tightened.
“Did you find your biological family?”
Emily’s expression collapsed.
“No, Dad. This isn’t about leaving you.”
Grace pushed the white towel toward me.
“Open it.”
When I unfolded it, three plane tickets slipped onto the table. Three passengers. Three seats.
“We leave in three days,” Grace explained.
They had spent years babysitting, tutoring, walking dogs, and working weekend jobs to purchase the tickets.
“For what?” I asked.
“For you,” Emily answered.
The destination was the same beach where I had found them.
“I can’t return there.”
“Yes, you can,” Grace said. “And you won’t do it alone.”
The pink towel contained a scrapbook. Across the cover, they had written:
**Our Family Began Before We Could Remember.**
Inside were photographs of our life together. The first showed me asleep with both babies against my chest. The following pages held birthdays, school performances, report cards, missing teeth, and handmade Father’s Day cards.
Near the back was a copy of Sarah’s photograph.
“Where did you get this?”
Emily admitted she had photographed it after my wallet fell open years earlier.
“Is she why you become quiet near our birthday?” Grace asked.
I told them I had hidden Sarah because I did not want them to feel like second choices.
“We never felt that way,” Emily said.
