Chapter 2
The room went dead silent.
Thirty-four years.
I was thirty-four years old.
The math hit me like a second slap.
Whatever this secret was, it started the year I was born.
Rachel lowered her phone.
She looked at my mother, then at me.
“What is she talking about?” Rachel asked.
I didn’t answer.
I couldn’t.
My throat had gone completely dry.
“Mom,” I said. “What secret?”
My mother slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor.
Her whole body was trembling.
“Your father made me promise,” she whispered. “We both promised. We were going to take it to our graves.”
“Take what to your graves?”
She looked up at me.
Her eyes were red and terrified.
“You have to understand,” she said. “We did it for you. Everything we did, we did to give you a better life.”
Rachel stepped closer to me.
“Evelyn, you tried to steal my house,” she said. “Don’t you dare play the victim now.”
“I wasn’t trying to steal it,” Mom cried. “I was trying to protect it!”
“From who?” I shouted.
She flinched.
Then she reached into her purse.
She pulled out an envelope.
Yellowed at the edges.
Thick with age.
She handed it to me.
Her hand was shaking so badly she almost dropped it.
“Read this,” she said. “Then you’ll understand why I needed the house in my name. Why I’ve spent thirty-four years looking over my shoulder.”
I tore open the envelope.
Inside was a birth certificate.
My birth certificate.
Or at least, it had my name on it.
But the parents listed weren’t my parents.
“Michael James Carter,” I read aloud. “Son of David Carter and Linda Carter.”
I looked up.
“Who are David and Linda Carter?”
My mother closed her eyes.
Tears spilled down her cheeks.
“They were your real parents,” she whispered.
The room spun.
Rachel grabbed my arm to steady me.
“What?” I said. “That’s impossible. I’m your son. You’re my mom.”
“I raised you,” she said. “I loved you like my own. But biologically? No. You were never mine.”
I stared at the birth certificate.
The date was correct.
The hospital was correct.
Everything matched except the names.
“Where are they now?” Rachel asked quietly.
My mother opened her eyes.
“Dead,” she said. “They died in a car accident when you were six weeks old.”
I dropped the paper.
It fluttered to the floor.
May you like
“So you adopted me?” I said. “Why lie about it? Why keep it a secret for thirty-four years?”
“Because we didn’t adopt you,” she whispered. “We took you.”
