Chapter 2: The Photograph at the Bottom of the Box
My hands wouldn't stop shaking.
I stood there in the parking lot, the wooden box pressed against my chest, staring at the lawyer like he had just told me the sky was falling.
"What do you mean he searched for me?" I whispered.
"He didn't even know my name."
The lawyer looked at me carefully.
"He knew your mother's name.
He knew the city.
He knew the year." He paused.
"He knew enough."
I felt the ground tilt beneath me.
I lifted the lid.
Inside was a photograph — old, slightly faded — of a young woman standing on a beach, laughing at the camera.
She was holding her shoes in one hand.
It was my mother.
She looked about twenty years old.
Maybe younger.
Beneath the photograph was a folded letter.
And beneath that, a document with both their names on it.
My mother's name.
Nathan's name.
A date.
Three months before I was born.
"He never stopped looking for her," the lawyer said quietly.
"And when he finally found out she had passed…
he found you instead."
My throat closed.
I turned the photograph over with trembling fingers.
On the back, in handwriting I didn't recognize, were four words.
*Tell her I'm sorry.*
Then my phone rang.
It was a number I didn't know — but the name on the screen made my heart stop completely.
It was my mother's name.
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What happened when she answered that call — and what was inside that document?
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The truth is more heartbreaking than anyone expected.
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