On Graduation Day an Orphan Girl Asked a Stranger to Pretend to Be Her Dad and What Happened Next Moved Everyone

had his uncle and his uncle’s girlfriend and a cousin who had driven in from Worcester with a sheet cake that said “Way to Go Jordan” in blue frosting.

Lila had no one. Her mother had died when she was six, a car accident on Route 9 on a Thursday evening in November, and in the three years since, the shape of that absence had not shrunk but had instead continue reading …