“…waiting for you to come back to us.”
I hit the porch steps two at a time, my heart hammering violently against my ribs. I grabbed my daughter’s arm, yanking her behind me. “Maya, get behind me right now,” I ordered, my voice shaking with a mix of terror and protective rage. I glared at the frail old man, who was still kneeling on the rotting wooden floorboards. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m her mother. We’re leaving.”
The man didn’t look angry; he looked entirely broken. He slowly stood up, leaning heavily on the peeling doorframe. “You might be the one raising her,” he wheezed, his voice thick with grief, “but you didn’t give birth to her. My daughter did.”
“It was a closed adoption,” I fired back, pulling Maya closer to my legs. “Through a highly reputable private agency in the city.”
The old man shook his head, new tears carving paths through the dust on his weathered face. “There was no agency. Seven years ago, my daughter’s husband took their newborn in the middle of the night and vanished. He told the police she had been kidnapped. He told us she was gone forever.”
The man choked on a sob, his eyes suddenly drifting past my face and locking onto the silver locket resting against my collarbone.
My blood turned to ice.
My husband, Greg, had given me that locket on our wedding anniversary, just weeks before we ‘got the call’ about a baby needing a home. Greg had handled all the adoption paperwork himself. He had hired the lawyer, paid the exorbitant fees, and dealt with the bureaucracy because I was too devastated by my own consecutive miscarriages to face the process. He had told me he found a miracle.
“Where did you get that necklace?” the old man whispered, pointing a trembling finger. “That belonged to my daughter. The night her husband took the baby, he took that, too.”
He stumbled into the house and returned a second later with a framed photograph. He turned it toward me. It was a picture of a young woman holding a newborn. Around her neck was the exact silver locket currently resting against my skin. And standing behind her, his hand resting possessively on her shoulder, was Greg.
Maya squeezed my hand, her seven-year-old voice echoing with an eerie, perfect calmness. “I told you this is where my real family was, Mommy. Daddy always told me if I ever drew this house for you, he would make you go away. But he’s on a business trip, so he can’t stop us now.”
