Page 291 of Taken Away

In the photograph, Harold Blackwood sat on the porch at Blackwood, one arm around a little girl balanced on his lap.

Aubrey.

Three, maybe four years old.

Her hair was loose and windblown. Her small hands rested on Harold’s face, one on each cheek, as if she had caught him and meant to turn him toward her.

But Harold was already looking.

Not at the camera.

At her.

His face was unguarded.

Open.

Filled with such unmistakable love that Aubrey felt something inside her tear and mend at once.

Pride. Wonder.

Joy.

A father looking at his child as if the rest of the world didn’t exist.

Aubrey touched the image with trembling fingers.

No one had posed him.

No one had asked him to look that way.

He simply had.

She turned the photograph over.

On the back, in the same careful handwriting as the Bible record, were three words.

My little Aubrey.

A sound broke out of her.

Bennett caught the Bible before it slipped from her hands.

Aubrey pressed the photograph to her chest.

“He loved me.”

The words came out as a question.

As a prayer.

As the answer to every lonely place inside her.

Bennett set the Bible gently on Harold’s desk.

“Yes,” he said. “He loved you.”

Aubrey shook her head, crying now.