Chapter 2: The Woman Who Had Been Watching
Standing at my front door, envelope still in my hand, I couldn't move.
Across the street stood a woman I had never seen before.
She looked about forty.
Well-dressed.
Calm in a way that felt wrong — like she had rehearsed this moment a hundred times.
"Are you her mother?" she called out.
"The one who found her at the airport?"
My throat closed.
"Who are you?" I managed.
She crossed the street slowly.
When she reached me, she looked at the envelope in my hand and nodded, like she already knew what was inside it.
"I sent that," she said quietly.
"I've been watching this house for three days.
I needed to make sure you were alone before I came."
I stepped back.
"What do you want?"
She reached into her bag and pulled out a photograph.
She held it up without a word.
It was Hope.
But Hope was maybe twelve in that photo — and she was standing next to a man and a woman I had never seen in my life.
They were smiling.
All three of them.
Like a family.
"Hope has known who her birth mother is since she was fifteen," the woman said.
"She found her on her own.
She never told you."
The lemon cake was still warm on my kitchen counter.
The blue candles were still unlit.
And upstairs, I could hear Hope's bedroom door beginning to open.
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What Hope said next — and what was inside that envelope — will break your heart.
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