He did not ask me to call him Grandpa.
He did not demand that I return the following day.
He simply said goodnight.
As the car pulled away from the mansion, I watched the illuminated windows disappear behind the trees.
I had arrived expecting to sell four hours of my time to a wealthy stranger.
I left carrying documents that suggested my entire identity had been built on a story I had never been told.
I barely slept.
By dawn, I had decided that the first person who deserved an explanation was the woman who had raised me.
My mother was awake when I entered her hospital room the next morning.
Helen Carter was seventy-three years old, with silver hair, delicate hands, and the same warm brown eyes I remembered from childhood.
She smiled when she saw me.
“You’re early, sweetheart. Did you sleep at all?”
I sat beside her bed.
