We pull up to a modest blue house with white shutters. My legs feel like water as I walk to the door.
“But we have to know.”
I knock. Three times. Soft.
The door opens. A woman stands there, gray-haired, weathered, but those eyes.
“Laura?” I whisper.
She covers her mouth. Tears spill instantly.
“You found us,” she breathes. “Oh God, you found us.”
Behind her, three young women appear in the hallway, confused, watching.
“You found us.”
“Mom, who is it?” the tallest one asks.
Laura turns to them, trembling.
“Girls… this is your father. These are your brothers.”
The room goes silent. Then one of my daughters drops the cup she’s holding.
“Laura, I don’t understand,” I say. “Twenty years. Twenty years.”
“I didn’t remember,” she sobs. “After the crash, the current pulled me under. A fisherman found me. I didn’t know my own name for years.”
“This is your father.”
“And the girls?”
“They were on the bank. I had pulled them out before I went back for my purse, the disc, anything that proved—” She breaks down. “When my
memory
started returning last spring, I was terrified. I thought you’d remarried. I thought the boys wouldn’t know me.”
Adam steps forward slowly.
“Mom?”
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