Maya placed another block. “He’s not here yet. But he’s coming. In the story.”
Ms. Albright read it again. The grammar was fractured, the spelling phonetic— com instead of came —but the weight behind it was immense. She turned back to the first page of the journal, where Maya had drawn a family: a stick figure with long hair (Maya), a smaller one (her baby brother, Leo), and a tall figure with a blue crayon shirt and a lopsided smile. Above the tall figure, Maya had written: Daddy. my first daddy com