She's wearing dark blue jeans and a faded white t-shirt that says "Palo Verde Orchestra". Long, tanned arms are folded in her lap, and her brown hair is curly and hangs a few inches past her shoulders. Her eyes are staring straight ahead, and she's chewing subconsciously on the left side of her bottom lip. On her feet are the flip-flops she bought for a dollar after she wore a hole in her old pair. On her middle finger is a single silver ring, wide and shining in the light. Sitting next to her is a black book-bag that looks at least 10 years old. The initials AGS are embroidered on the bag. She's sitting outside an office, and when the door opens and a man with gray hair and a beard to match opens the door, her teeth drop her lip and she smiles widely, grabbing her bag and jumping up to walk into the office behind him.
Inside the office, she and the man embrace and she kisses his bearded cheek as he runs his hand across her upper back in a move of familiar reassurance. When they break apart, she flops down into a chair across from a cluttered desk. He smiles, and moves to sit in the chair behind the desk.
When she opens her mouth, her voice is warm with love.
"Dad."
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At home she's sitting on the couch, feet tucked under her, wearing a faded grey sweatshirt that says "UCLA" with the hood pulled up. She's watching her favorite television show and every so often her laughter punctuates the silence. He's in his room sleeping. Next to the television there are framed pictures. One features a young girl with a curly ponytail, wearing a shirt that says "Don't Bug Me!" and sticking her tongue out at the camera. In another is a bearded man holding the hand of a tall woman with brown hair and a gap between her front teeth.
He sits at a desk writing an answer to an entomological e-mail query. She's at the kitchen table, and he can hear her pen scratching across her paper, writing one last paper for her AP English class. Next to him, in a locked drawer, sit the most important papers he's ever held.
CERTIFICATE OF ADOPTION: ANNABETH GAIL SIMMONS
At the bottom of the page, his signature sits next to Sara's, making Annabeth their's for life.
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It has been a day since she came to surprise him at his office, home early from her spring break trip to the beach with her friends. Now, a day later, they sit on the couch watching a documentary on the History Channel when the door opens. They both hear a bag drop to the floor, but the girl is a blur as she jumps off the couch to greet the visitor.
"MOM!"
He had sat at home alone when both of his girls had been gone, wondering what he had ever done to deserve to be so lucky. He had stared at their pictures wanting to tell them both how much they meant to him. How he would never hesitate to do anything for them. But he knew it was better this way, his quiet kind of love. He hoped that when he dropped down on the couch next to his daughter she knew it was because he needed her proximity to let him know she was really there. And he knew that when he reached out in the night for a hip and dragged it closer to him his wife knew he loved her much, much more than he was willing to let on. Once, in the cool dark, she had whispered, "I know."
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Family portraits lie. There had been one in his house – a small boy with curls flanked by a blonde woman and a tall, dark haired man. The man was smiling wide, his big hand on the small boy's shoulder, giving no clues to his real character. But he remembered those hands, giving a curt wave as he left. And came back. And left. And came back. And finally left for good, on the couch one hot summer day. But as he put this new picture in a frame he thought that family portraits didn't always have to lie. As he shut the back of the frame and righted the new picture next to the old ones, he thought that this one told the truth. A daughter, her mortar board askew and her eyes alight, flanked by two beaming parents – this picture didn't lie. And he liked that.