It was not an easy yes.

Saying it meant reopening a wound I had spent ten years carefully keeping closed, meant driving back toward people I had taught myself not to think about, meant risking a second rejection that I was not at all sure I could survive.

Every self-protective instinct I had built up over a decade told me to say no, to keep us safely far from Ohio and everything it held.

But underneath the fear was a thing I could not argue with, which was that my daughter had asked for something reasonable and human, to know the people she came from, and that my refusing her would be protecting myself at her expense.