Three months later, David and Anna organized a small family gathering in their backyard.
Everyone was there.
Sophia had been holding baby Hope for nearly two hours.
“Mom, you’re never going to give her back, are you?” David laughed.
“I have years of grandmotherhood to make up for,” she replied.
“She’s only three months old,” Mark pointed out.
“Be quiet. I also have forty years of motherhood to make up for.”
Everyone laughed.
Mark looked at Sophia.
Their relationship was still new.
They couldn’t recover all the lost years in a single day.
But they were no longer in a hurry.
Now, they had time.
Near the end of the evening, Anna’s phone rang again.
Everyone suddenly became quiet.
David looked at the phone.
“I really hope we’re not about to discover another brother or sister.”
Anna laughed and answered the call.
After listening for several seconds, her expression changed.
“What happened?” David asked.
Anna slowly lowered the phone.
“It was the hospital.”
Everyone became serious.
“And?”
Anna looked at Mark.
“Remember the program you work with—the one that helps children with rare illnesses?”
“Yes.”
“A family has just made a very large donation to the foundation.”
“Who?”
Anna smiled.
“An anonymous donor.”
David immediately looked suspiciously at his mother.
Sophia put on an innocent expression.
“Don’t look at me.”
At that exact moment, her phone rang inside her handbag.
A banking notification appeared on the screen.
Sophia quickly hid it.
Mark smiled.
“Mom.”
Sophia froze.
It was the first time he had called her that.
Mom.
Just one word.
But for Sophia, that single word was worth forty years of waiting.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“Say it again.”
Mark stepped closer.
“Mom.”
Sophia embraced him.
A few steps away, David wrapped his arm around Anna, while little Hope slept peacefully between them, completely unaware of everything her birth had changed.