“Eat your breakfast, gossip girl.”
Afterward, I held the dress up.
The seams wobbled, but the fabric shimmered.
She squealed and ran to her room. While she changed, I noticed mail on the counter. A cream envelope from a law office peeked from the bottom.
I had tossed it aside weeks ago, thinking it was a collection notice again.
“Noah, look!”
Mia, my adopted sister, spun into the kitchen, arms wide, the dress flaring around her knees. Her face was pure light.
“You look like the most beautiful princess in the world.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
I knelt, held her shoulders, and swallowed hard.
“I promise you, Mia. Everything is going to be okay.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck.
Over her shoulder, through the window, I saw a black sedan across the street, the same one I had noticed near the café. My smile faltered. A man sat behind the wheel, face hidden by glare, as still as if he were waiting.
The auditorium smelled like crayons and floor wax.
I sat in the third row, tugging at my only clean button-down, while parents in pressed slacks adjusted expensive cameras. Mia stood onstage in her homemade dress, the ribbon I had tied still perfect. She spotted me and waved with her arm.
“That’s my sister,” I whispered.
The woman beside me smiled politely, then returned to her phone.
When the ceremony ended, Mia crashed into my legs.
“Did you see when I bowed?”
“I saw, princess. You were the best.”
“Can we get ice cream now?”
“Two scoops,” I said, laughing softly.
We started toward the gate. That was when I noticed another man, not the one from the sedan.
He wore a charcoal suit and stood with hands folded, watching me the way someone watches a door he has been waiting at for hours. I slowed, and Mia tugged my hand.
“Noah?” the man asked.
“I handled papers for your parents.”
I stared at him.
“My parents never mentioned an attorney.”
“They were private about it. My office sent a notice a few weeks ago, requesting a meeting.”
The cream envelope on my counter.
The one I had ignored again completely.
“That was you.”
“Yes. Your mother instructed me to mail first. If you did not answer before today, I was to come here myself.”
