The auditorium was packed when they called my name. I walked toward the podium carrying my carefully prepared speech, then looked at the front row. Three chairs were empty. Each carried the same small sign: Reserved for Dr. Sofia Navarro’s Family. I’d mailed those tickets six months earlier. Nine hundred strangers were waiting for me to speak, but suddenly I couldn’t read a single sentence I’d written.

Then my phone buzzed inside my graduation gown. Mom had sent a photograph. My brother Nathan was kneeling in a restaurant garden while my parents stood behind him, crying and raising their glasses. Beneath it she’d written, “Hope your little thing went well, sweetie!” They were several states away celebrating a birthday and proposal while I stood alone at one of the biggest moments of my life. I looked at my prepared speech, slowly placed it aside, raised my arm—and pointed directly toward those three empty chairs.

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