“What if we were long-lost sisters? Wouldn’t that be cool?” I instantly regretted it the moment I said it. It was too much too soon.

Thankfully she giggled. “You’re too old to be my sister! Though it’d be nice to have an older sister. All I have is a younger brother, and he’s exhausting. I guess that’s why Mom calls it the terrible twos, though he’s already three. He’s constantly messing up my room.”

I chuckled. “That’s what siblings are for—to wear us out and keep us on our toes.” Not that I knew this from experience. My only sibling had been taken away from me the day she was born. “So what’s your name?” I already knew this answer too.

“Vera.”

She didn’t look like a Vera to me. “Oh, that’s a unique name.” Unique was the best adjective I could find for a name like that.

“I’m named after my great-great-grandmother Alvera Fields. She was a women’s rights activist and disappeared one day. No one ever found her.”

“Well, that’s morbid. Why would your parents name you after a missing ancestor?”

“Because she was pretty heroic, I guess. She was well-known around Pittsburgh for her women’s suffrage work. She raised tons of money for the cause by throwing huge fundraiser parties. I guess her husband knew a lot of rich people.”

Rich. Well-connected. Sounded a lot like the Portman family alright. The difference was that Felicity took advantage of a grieving father’s terrible situation by basically stealing his newborn baby from him. A few hundred dollars could never make what Felicity Portman did right, no matter how much she needed to sleep soundly at night. It was black market child trafficking.

“Wow, you’re very articulate. Do you know what that means?”

She nibbled on her lower lip in thought. “Knowing a lot of words?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Plus you seem pretty smart and know so much about history. Most kids your age don’t even know what women’s suffrage is. I learned everything I know about it from watching Suffragette.”

“Most adults don’t know much either, especially if they’re getting their history lesson from a fiction movie.”

I chuckled. This one was clever, alright. Just like her father—the biological one. “That’s probably true. How’d you get so smart?”

“I read a lot. And I take after my mom, I guess.” No, honey, those brains definitely didn’t come from your mother. “She’s really smart and loves books. We have a library so big that it has a rolling ladder to reach the top shelves. Though my dad’s pretty smart too. He’s teaching me how to build stuff and draw.”

“It sounds like you have a good dad. Is that him over there?” I pointed to a swing under a tree where a man intently watched us.