Dear Prudence,
My husband and I both had twins from our first marriages. I was pregnant with our son when his sister was murdered, leaving her newborn son alone in the world. We ended up adopting his nephew and raising him as our own. The boys are 4½ now. We currently have moved to another state and for the first time have to deal with the stares and questions our little family gets. Some of them are borderline intrusive, like asking if we used IVF or were trying for some world record. We struggle with how to deal with these inquires without peeling back the entirety of our painful history (he lost his first wife to cancer, my ex hasn’t been seen in six years, the murder, etc.). We used to live where we had family in the area, and everyone knew our story. We didn’t have to trot it out to strangers in the grocery store. Can you help us?
—Family Scanning