My new wife’s seven-year-old daughter burst into tears every time we were left alone together. Whenever I gently asked her what was wrong, she would only shake her head silently. My wife would just laugh it off and say, “She simply doesn’t like you.”
The first time Harper cried when we were alone together, I convinced myself she was simply trying to survive the shock of a completely new life.
That is the comforting lie adults cling to when a child stands before them with watery eyes, rigid shoulders, and a face far too composed for someone her age. I had only married her mother three weeks earlier. At seven years old, a child is old enough to understand that her world has changed forever, but still too young to control any part of it.
A strange man walking through the hallway.
A different last name filling out school paperwork.
