I knelt down and gently held their hands. “Sweetheart, I think you’re mistaken. I’m not your mother.”
The taller girl’s face crumpled instantly. “That’s not true. You are our mother. We know you are.”
Her sister clung tighter to my arm, tears filling her eyes. “You’re lying, Mommy. Why are you pretending you don’t know us?”
“I’m not your mother.”
They refused to accept that and stayed close to me the entire day. They sat beside me during every activity, saved the chair next to them at lunch, and spoke to me with the complete trust children show when they feel truly understood.
They called me “Mom” every single time, without hesitation.
“Why didn’t you come to get us all these years?” the shorter one asked on the third afternoon while we built a block tower together. “We missed you.”
“What is your name, sweetie?”
“I’m Kelly. And she’s my sister, Mia. The lady in our house showed us your picture and told us to find you.”
“We missed you.”
I slowly placed a block down. “What lady?”
“The lady at home,” Kelly said. Then, with the blunt honesty of a five-year-old, “She’s not our real mom. She told us that.”
The block tower collapsed. Neither of us tried to rebuild it.
Later that afternoon, a woman I assumed was their mother arrived to pick them up. The moment I saw her, I froze.
I knew her.
Not closely, and not recently, but I recognized her.
“She’s not our real mom.”
I had once seen her in the background of a corporate party photo, standing beside Pete with a drink in her hand.
Pete’s coworker, I had thought. Maybe a friend.
She noticed me at the same moment I noticed her. Shock crossed her face, followed by calculation, and then something that almost resembled relief.
She walked over to the girls, took their hands, and guided them toward the door. At the doorway she turned back and slipped a small card into my palm without meeting my eyes.
“I know who you are. You should take your daughters back,” she said. “I was already trying to figure out how to contact you. Come to this address if you want to understand everything. And after that, leave my family alone.”
“You should take your daughters back.”
The door closed behind her. I stood there holding the card, feeling as if the entire direction of my life had suddenly shifted.
I hurried to my car in the parking lot and sat there for fifteen minutes.
Twice I picked up my phone to call Pete, and twice I put it back down. The last time I had heard his voice, he was telling me our daughters were dead while somehow blaming me for it. I wasn’t ready to hear that voice again.
Instead, I typed the woman’s address into my GPS and drove.
It was a house in a quiet residential neighborhood.
I typed the woman’s address into my GPS and drove.
I knocked on the door. When it opened, the last person I expected to see standing there was Pete.
His face turned pale.
“CAMILA??”
I hadn’t seen him since the divorce.
Behind him, the woman from the daycare appeared holding an infant boy. She looked at Pete, then at me, and said calmly, “I’m glad you showed up… finally!”
I hadn’t seen him after the divorce.
“Alice, what’s going on?” Pete gasped. “How did she…?”
I stepped inside without answering him. On the wall hung a series of framed photos: wedding pictures, Pete and the woman standing together at an altar, and the girls in matching dresses during what looked like a honeymoon trip.
“Alice… why is Camila here?” Pete gasped. “How did she even find this place?”
Alice kept her eyes fixed on me. “Maybe it was meant to happen. Maybe fate wanted her to find them.”
“How did she even find this place?”
Pete stared at her. “Find them? What are you talking about?”
“She’s their mother! Maybe it’s time they went back to her.”
I froze. “What did you say?”
Alice finally looked directly at me. “Those girls… they’re yours. The daughters you were told died.”
“Alice, stop,” Pete snapped quickly. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
