“No.”
It came out immediately.
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I’ve waited 41 years.”
“I know.”
“Then why is she sitting out there?”
Mia looked toward the window again.
“Because she’s spent that many years believing you gave her away because you didn’t want her.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
The lie.
The same lie I’d been telling myself from the opposite side.
I thought she hated me.
She thought I never loved her.
Forty-one years.
Two women.
The same lie.
Just told from opposite sides.
I walked slowly to the couch and sat down before my legs gave out beneath me.
“I wanted her.”
The words barely rose above a whisper.
“I begged them not to take her.”
Mia’s head lifted.
“What?”
“I never wanted to let her go.”
She frowned.
“My mom said the adoption papers said you signed voluntarily.”
I laughed once.
It wasn’t a happy sound.
“Those papers didn’t tell the whole story.”
Mia stared at me.
“My grandparents told her you were young and wanted a different life.”
“My parents told me Grace would be better off forgetting I ever existed.”
Neither of us spoke.
The room suddenly felt much smaller.
Finally Mia asked the question I’d dreaded for four decades.
“So…”
She looked down at the photograph in her hands.
“What really happened?”
I looked toward the car one more time.
If Grace was finally going to know the truth, I wanted someone to say it out loud.
The day Grace was born, I was 19.
Scared.
Unmarried.
And completely alone.
At least, that’s what everyone wanted me to believe.
My parents had made sure of it.
“I don’t understand,” Mia whispered.
I looked at the photograph in her hands.
Neither did I.
Not for a very long time.
“My parents were respected people in our town,” I said.
“Church every Sunday. Charity dinners. They cared more about what people thought than what was true.”
I took a slow breath.
“When they found out I was pregnant, they told everyone I was going to stay with an aunt for a few months.”
“You weren’t?”
I shook my head.
“They rented a tiny apartment two counties away. I wasn’t allowed to come home.”
Mia frowned.
“They hid you?”
“They called it protecting the family’s reputation.”
The words still tasted bitter after all these years.
“I wasn’t allowed to tell my friends where I was.”
“I wasn’t allowed to call anyone.”
“I wasn’t even allowed to write letters.”
“What about Grace’s father?”
For a moment, I smiled.
A sad smile.
“Daniel.”
Just saying his name brought back memories I’d buried for decades.
“He was 20. He wanted to marry me.”
Mia blinked.
“He did?”
“He bought a little ring with money he’d saved from working nights at a gas station.”
I laughed softly.
“It wasn’t much of a ring. But to me…”
I touched my left hand without thinking.
“…it was everything.”
“What happened?”
“My father.”
I didn’t need to say anything else.
Mia’s expression changed.
“He threatened him.”
“He told Daniel if he ever came near me again, he’d have him arrested.”
