“Claire… we need to go,” he said.
But it was too late.
The truth had already found its way out.
When I demanded answers, he finally broke.
“She arranged the adoption,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Your mother.”
The room went silent.
“She told the clinic the baby had died,” he continued. “Not everyone. Just enough people. There was a lawyer. Papers. You were a minor… you never agreed to any of it.”
I stared at him.
“You let me grieve a child who was alive?”
He whispered, “I didn’t know how to stop it.”
“And that kept you silent for twenty-one years?”
He had no answer.
Miles looked at me, his voice quiet.
“Are you saying… you’re my mother?”
Tears filled my eyes.
“I think I am.”
He asked the only question that mattered.
“Can you prove it?”
“Yes,” I said. “DNA, records—anything. But you need to know this first… I never gave you up. I was told you died.”
He looked down at the blanket, running his fingers over the yellow birds.
“My parents always said my birth mother was young… that she left this for me. No name. Nothing else.”
“They didn’t know,” my father added. “They were lied to too.”
Miles didn’t even look at him.
He looked at me.
