"I found a family."
"By pretending she was dead?"
He exhaled sharply. "She wasn't the same, Mary. She was slower. Different. I just couldn't..."
"We are done," I said with such finality that it shocked me.
"No, Mary, we can still fix this. I'll talk to the adoptive parents. We can undo the chaos. She belongs with them now."
"She belongs with me."
Neil shook his head. "You don't understand what you're signing up for."
"I understand that you abandoned your child because she wasn't convenient."
"You don't understand what you're signing up for."
His face hardened.
"I'm leaving now. Don't follow me," I continued.
"Babe, please don't."
I walked past him and through the front door.
"Mary!" he called after me. "Don't ruin everything over this!"
I didn't look back. He'd ruined everything two years earlier.
"Don't ruin everything over this!"
When I returned to Melissa's house, Grace was sitting at the kitchen table, eating grilled cheese.
She looked up. "Mom!"
That word steadied me. I sat across from her. "Tell me how you got to your school, baby."
She hesitated. "I started remembering things last year. Your voice. My room. I told them, but they said I was confused."
"The people you were living with?"
"Tell me how you got to your school, baby."
She nodded. "They kept me indoors and made me cook and clean a lot. I wanted to see if what I remembered was true, so when I recalled my old school, I stole some money and called a cab while they napped."
"You did the right thing."
She leaned toward me. "You're not sending me back, are you?"
"Never," I said firmly. "No one will take you again."
***
The following day, I went to the police. I brought the hospital records Dr. Peterson printed for me, the transfer documentation, and the recording I'd secretly made of Neil confessing everything at our house.
