Mom Said Grandpa Was Dead, Then Sophie met him
CHAPTER 1 - THE MAN ON THE STEPS
"You need it more."
The little girl said it with the grave seriousness only children can manage.
Sophie stood on the bottom wooden step in her pink puffer coat, holding her pale jacket around the shoulders of the old man who had been sitting there, rubbing his red hands together against the cold.
Maggie had only turned away for a second to lock the front door.
Now she hurried down the path, fear rising fast and ugly in her chest.
"Sophie, let's go now."
She reached for her daughter's hand, already preparing an apology to the stranger. But before her fingers touched Sophie, something swung against the old man's chest as he pushed himself up.
A wooden pendant.
Small. Oval. Hanging from a frayed cord.
Maggie stopped.
The world narrowed to that piece of wood.
"Where did you get that?" she asked.
The old man looked down and lifted it carefully into his palm. His thumb moved over the smooth surface with a tenderness that made Maggie's throat tighten.
"My daughter made this when she was eight," he said softly. "Wouldn't let me wear anything else for a month."
Maggie's lips parted. She could barely hear the street anymore.
When she was eight, she had carved a pendant in art class with a borrowed pocketknife and a teacher who should have known better. Her first real letter had been an M so crooked her father had laughed and kissed the top of her head.
She raised a shaking hand toward it and stopped.
"Is there an M on the back?"
The old man frowned, then turned it over.
There it was.
A clumsy, carved M.
He looked up fast. Really looked at her.
"Maggie?" he whispered.
Her eyes filled at once. She reached for the hand holding the pendant.
"Dad?"
Sophie stared between them, confused, her small face open and honest.
"Mom," she said quietly, "but you said Grandpa is dead."
Maggie felt the blood drain from her face.
Because she had said that.
For twenty-six years, she had believed it.
