“Dad, that waitress looks just like Mom!” The millionaire was shocked to learn that his wife had died many years ago.

Then she asked, “Why did you come back?”

James looked at her sincerely. “Because you’re family. And Emily, our daughter, deserves to know you. She saw you and thought you were her mother. I think she deserves the truth. You too.”

Tears welled up in Anna’s eyes. “I don’t know how to be an aunt. Or anything.”

“You don’t need to know now,” James said. “Just eat with us. Talk. Start there.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay.”

That evening, James brought Emily back to Bramble Creek. She stared at Anna for a long time, then looked wide-eyed at her father.

“She’s Mom’s sister, right?”

James nodded.

Emily stepped forward, put her arms around Anna’s waist, and whispered, “You smell like her.”

Anna hugged her back, tears streaming down her cheeks.

It wasn’t a perfect ending. There were wounds to work through, years to unpack. But it was a beginning. A second chance at a family neither of them knew existed.