I had been robbed, and lied to, and sent home to grieve a child who was in a crib across town.
Noah, it turned out, had been raised by a woman named Bonnie and her husband — a kind, childless couple who had wanted a baby for years and were told, through a private arrangement, that they were adopting a twin his young mother “couldn’t manage to keep both of.”
Bonnie was not a villain. Bonnie had rocked that baby and loved him and believed, her whole life, that she’d been given a child by a mother who chose to let him go.
When Noah turned eighteen, he’d requested his own records, the way adopted kids are allowed to.
And the birth mother’s name on his paperwork was mine.
And the birth date was the same as his best friend’s.
Noah had sat with that for a week, terrified, and finally told Jake, and the two of them — eighteen and brave and furious — had gone looking for the original document, the one that proved it wasn’t a coincidence and wasn’t a mix-up.
