The room seemed to tilt.
I looked at Mark. “What does that mean?”
Mark finally lifted his eyes, and I saw something I had never seen in him before.
Fear.
Dr. Reeves spoke slowly, carefully, like every word had a blade on it.
“Thirty-one years ago, my wife and I had a son. He was taken from the hospital nursery when he was two days old.”
Elaine pressed a hand to her chest.
“We searched for years,” she whispered. “Police, posters, private investigators. Nothing.”
My throat went dry.
“No,” I said. “No, that has nothing to do with me.”
Dr. Reeves nodded toward Mark.
“When your son was born, I noticed the mark. Then his face. His eyes. I asked the father’s name because…” He stopped, fighting for control. “Because Mark looks exactly like my father did at his age.”
Mark turned away, but not before I saw his tears.
Elaine stepped closer to him. “We found you three weeks ago.”
My mouth fell open.
Three weeks.
“You knew?” I looked at Mark. “You knew?”
He dragged a hand over his face. “I found out after a DNA test. My mother—the woman who raised me—told me everything before she died. She said she bought me from someone. I thought she was rambling. Then the test came back.”
The words hit the room like stones.
Bought.
Taken.
Hidden.
And Mark had known.
I stared at him, suddenly understanding why he had appeared now, why his face looked wrecked.
“You came here because of them,” I said. “Not because of us.”
He flinched.
That was answer enough.
Chapter Three — The Truth Beneath the Cruelty
Elaine looked at me with desperate gentleness. “We didn’t know about you until today. Mark called us when the hospital notified him.”
I laughed once, sharp and empty. “He ignored every appointment. Every bill. Every message. But today he remembered he had a child?”
Mark stepped forward. “I was scared.”
“No,” I said. “I was scared. Alone. Pregnant. Working double shifts while you were posting beach photos with your friends.”
His mouth trembled. “I didn’t know who I was.”
“And that made you forget who I was?”
Silence.
That was the truth he could not escape.
Pain may explain a wound, but it does not excuse passing the knife to someone else.
Dr. Reeves looked at Mark, and his voice hardened. Not loud. Worse—disappointed.
“You lost years because someone stole you from us,” he said. “But this woman lost her pregnancy alone because you chose to abandon her. Those are not the same thing.”
Mark lowered his head like a boy being judged by the father he had spent his whole life missing.
For a moment, I almost pitied him.
Almost.
But then my son stirred in my arms, tiny mouth opening, tiny fists curling, and the pity found its proper place behind protection.
