Porto Alegre, Brazil

“Mama, quem é que na foto?” the little boy asked, looking at the tattered image his mother held in her hands.

It was a little girl with the same dark wavy hair as him. She had the same eyes too. Only her skin was darker than his, more like his avó.

“She looks like you, huh?” she replied in Portuguese.

Sim Mama, é você?

“No Davi, its not me. I guess she does look like me a little too.”

“Well who is she? She looks like Grandma too. How old is she? Is she 5 like me? Does she live here? Can she come play with me? We can play cinco marias, or play with the puppies.”

Davi fired questions at her in rapid succession. Paola was always challenged by the inquisitive nature of her young son. Without a suitable distraction, he wouldn’t let it go until his myriad of questions were answered. She’d had Davi later in life, unplanned but definitely not unwanted. A chance for her to try again, to do right by a child of hers, to make up for the one she’d wronged. It was always around this time that she thought about Jamie, her first born, her baby girl, too naïve, too stupid to realize that she couldn’t run away from her problems. Although she’d lost Justin, and much of herself along the way, she hadn’t lost everything. Instead she’d thrown away what was most precious, the most important thing in her life, discarded, carelessly, selfishly, all in the name of starting over.

 At the end of the month, Jamie would be 23 years old. She could still remember giving birth. Jamie came exactly on her due date, after 4 hours of natural labor. The doctors said it was one of the quickest births of a first child, they’d ever seen. She had been an easy baby, an even better little girl, and Paola had foolishly blamed her of all people for what her life had become.

Not ready to have that conversation with her son, she ushered him outside to the kennel to check on the litter of puppies one of their champion Labradors had birthed 3 weeks prior.

“Maybe you should try to find her? To find peace?” she heard a masculine voice behind her. She turned to find her husband of 10 years. By appearances alone, Roberto could be intimidating, because of his large, muscular 6-foot frame, bald head, and the dark salt and pepper of his beard. But once you saw him in the kennel with a litter of 5 week old puppies crawling all over him, or kissing them sweetly on the nose, you’d quickly learn what a gentle soul he had.

Roberto was retired from the Brazilian army and 12 years Paola’s senior. He’d taken to the sport of purebred dogs, and when Paola went in search of a puppy, a source of unconditional love, instead of coming home with a little bundle of fur, she’d left with plans for dinner the next day.

Ever the gentleman, Roberto had courted her, taking things as slowly as she wanted all the while showing her that she could in fact trust men, trust him, to take care of her, to provide for her, something that Justin could never quite figure out. Although he’d eventually gifted her a little black lab puppy, his presence in her life brought so much more. Roberto was her savior, her protector, her lover, and she knew without a doubt she would spend the rest of her life with him.

I wouldn’t even know where to start, ‘Beto. She’s a grown woman now. 23 soon. She could have new parents, new family. I cannot.

The pain and regret in Paola’s voice broke Roberto’s heart. So he did what he always did, wrapped his arms around her and pressed his lips to her forheard as she let tears flow. He’d spent the first 2 solid years of their relationship building her up, trying to restore her confidence, assuring her that while she’d made mistakes, she couldn’t let the weight of them bury her. She’d cried in his arms countless times before while mourning the loss of her first love and her child. When they’d gotten married, he made it his goal to love her past the pain. Davi’s birth brought a light back into Paola’s eyes that Roberto hadn’t seen in all the time they’d been together. But still, she wasn’t completely whole, and he doubted she’d ever heal without making amends, righting the terrible wrong of abandoning her daughter.

Roberto had some contacts, a sobrinho who was a police detective in New York. He would make a call, plant a few seeds and see what he could find out. He hated to see his wife struggle so terribly with what she’d done in the past. Young and foolish she was then, but that wasn’t the woman she had become. This woman was strong, confident, and most of all a wonderful mother to their son. Roberto never thought he’d have a family of his own, the life he’d chosen not really what a woman wanted to put up with. But Paola had come along and later Davi, and he would do absolutely anything for them to be happy. He would do it. He would find Jamie for Paola.