Chapter 4
The leather folder held my childhood in pieces.
Hospital records.
Photos.
Letters.
A silver bracelet my mother had worn.
Receipts from investigators.
A DNA test kit still sealed.
A note written in my mother’s handwriting.
Thomas gave me that last.
His fingers shook.
“This was mailed to me after your mother died. It arrived six months late because it was sent from an old address.”
I unfolded it carefully.
Tom,
If you are reading this, then Caroline has probably done what she promised.
She said she would tell you I left because I hated you.
That is not true.
I left because she threatened to report you for something you did not do if I stayed.
She said she could ruin you.
She said my baby would be taken if I fought.
I was young.
Scared.
I believed her.
Our daughter’s name is Emma Rose.
I call her Emily now because Caroline said your family would find us.
Please find her if anything happens to me.
Please tell her I loved you.
Grace
The room tilted.
Maya caught my shoulder.
My aunt had lied.
Not once.
For my whole life.
Thomas wiped his eyes.
“I got that after your mother was already gone and after Caroline had moved you again.”
I could barely speak.
“Why would she do that?”
His face hardened.
“Money.”
That word sat in the room like rot.
“Your mother inherited a small property from her grandmother. Caroline sold it after Grace died. She could only control it if she had guardianship over you and kept me away.”
I thought about Aunt Caroline’s apartment.
Her designer bags.
The way she called me ungrateful when I asked why we moved so much.
The way she stopped paying for school lunches by ninth grade and told me work would build character.
The way I started waiting tables at sixteen.
“How much?” I whispered.
Thomas did not soften it.
“Enough that you should not have been struggling.”
My throat closed.
The bills on the restaurant floor flashed in my mind.
The rich man’s shoe.
May you like
Use both hands.
My life had been shaped by people stealing from me and then calling me small for needing work.
