Helen opened the door and began crying before we said anything.
“I wondered if this day would come.”
I thought I had become immune to that sentence.
I had not.
Her living room contained no secret files.
No sinister evidence.
Just photographs of grandchildren and a crocheted blanket.
Helen looked at Rebecca for a long time.
“You came back.”
Rebecca answered:
“Thirty years late.”
“So did I.”
That shut the room down.
Helen admitted her role immediately.
She had helped arrange the false record.
Why?
Because she believed she was preventing three tragedies.
A grieving mother losing a child.
A terrified teenager losing control of her baby to an abusive man.
A newborn entering foster care.
She thought combining those problems created one solution.
I stared at her.
“You made me a mother by hiding the fact that my daughter died.”
Helen cried.
“Yes.”
“You made Rebecca disappear from her own child's records.”
