June 25, 2021:

I'm happy for her that she found her father.

His family accepted and loved her. She experienced a warmth of community she never knew apart from them. She loved them, that's important. Although I never personally cared for them I'm grateful to them for the love they gave her.

She wore a locket with my picture at age five.

"You were so cute," she'd squeak in that peculiar cloying way of hers. I was accepted as long as I was cute. But she never put two and two together. I was five at the moment when...