She held the folded paper carefully in her small hands.

“Even though finding it made our lives so complicated and sad?”

“Sometimes the truth is very complicated, Daisy,” I told her warmly.

“But living in a lie is far worse.”

She looked up at me with her big, curious eyes.

“Do you think Dad is still alive somewhere out in the world?”

I looked out the kitchen window toward the distant mountain peaks, where the sun was setting in brilliant shades of orange and gold.

That agonizing question still lived deep in my heart, but it no longer had the power to paralyze my everyday life.