I didn't sleep much that night.
After Nora left, I stayed at the kitchen table with the report in front of me.
I kept turning the pages over, even though there was nothing on the back.
The envelope sat beside my elbow.
I couldn't bring myself to put it away.
Every time I tried to stand, I remembered Nora's face when she told me Ellie might be Lucy.
Then I sat down again.
I wanted to call my sister and ask her to come back.
I also wanted to be alone.
Both feelings were true, and neither made the other disappear.
I picked up my phone several times.
Each time, I put it down without calling.
What could I say?
Had she made a mistake?
Was the report wrong?
Could a child really be alive after I had spent five years believing she was dead?
I couldn't ask those questions without hearing how impossible they sounded.
Still, I needed answers.
I went upstairs and opened the small drawer beside my bed.
The little box was where I had always kept it.
Inside was Lucy's identification bracelet.
I lifted it carefully.
Her name was printed on it, just as I remembered.
Lucy.
I traced the letters with my finger.
For years, that bracelet had been the one physical thing I could hold when my memories became too painful.
Now I looked at it and wondered whether I had misunderstood the only story I had ever been given.
I hated myself for wondering.
I hated the thought that I might have been wrong about my own daughter's death.
And I hated that a part of me was afraid to hope.
Hope had become dangerous to me.
It had been dangerous in the hospital, when I waited for someone to bring Lucy back.
It had been dangerous during the long hours before the doctor came into my room.
I had learned to survive by accepting what I was told.
Now I was being asked to reopen everything.
The next morning, I called Nora.
She answered immediately.
Neither of us spoke at first.
Finally, she asked whether I had slept.
"Not really."
"Me neither."
I heard a small sound in the background.
It might have been Tom moving around the house.
I pictured Ellie nearby, perhaps eating breakfast or asking for something she couldn't reach.
The thought made my throat tighten.
"Is Ellie all right?" I asked.
"She's fine. She's having breakfast with Tom."
I closed my eyes.
"Does she know anything?"
"No. We haven't told her anything."
I was grateful for that.
Ellie was five.
She had only just begun to feel settled in her new home.
Whatever the records meant, she didn't deserve to carry the fear that had taken hold of the adults around her.
Nora spoke carefully.
"The agency wants us to arrange an independent test."
"How long will it take?"
"They haven't given us a definite answer yet."
I gripped the phone.
"I need to know whether this is real."
"I know."
Her voice broke slightly.
"I need to know, too."
That was when I understood something I hadn't allowed myself to consider the previous afternoon.
Nora was frightened for reasons of her own.
She had waited eight years to become a mother.
She had finally brought Ellie home.
Now the child's records were raising questions that could change everything Nora understood about the adoption.
But she wasn't treating me like an obstacle.
She had come to tell me the truth as far as she knew it.
She could have hidden the report from me.
She hadn't.
That mattered.
"Thank you for telling me," I said.
She went quiet.
Then she whispered, "I was afraid you would think I had done something wrong."
I looked at the bracelet on my bedside table.
"You didn't know."
"No."
"Neither did I."
We agreed that we would wait for the independent test before drawing any conclusions.
It was the sensible decision.
It was also the hardest one I had ever made.
For the next few days, I tried to carry on normally.
I went to work.
I answered messages.
I bought groceries and put them away.
I did the small things that make a life look ordinary from the outside.
But my mind kept returning to the report.
Whenever my phone rang, I looked at the screen too quickly.
Whenever it stayed silent, I wondered whether there had been a delay.
I had no control over the records, the testing, or the answers that might come.
I could only wait.
Nora and I spoke often.
Sometimes we discussed the next steps.
Sometimes we talked about Ellie.
We were careful not to turn every conversation into a discussion of the possibility that she might be Lucy.
That possibility was already taking up enough space in both our minds.
One afternoon, Nora sent me a picture of Ellie.
She was sitting at a table with her hair tied into two pigtails.
The ribbons were slightly uneven.
I recognized them immediately.
They were the ones I had helped her put on during one of my visits.
Ellie was smiling at whoever held the camera.
Her left cheek showed the little dimple.
I stared at the picture for a long time.
Then I saved it.
I didn't know whether I was looking at my niece, my daughter, or a child whose history was about to be changed by adults she had never met.
For now, she was simply Ellie.
I wanted to remember that.
I wanted to protect that small piece of certainty while everything else remained unsettled.
That evening, I took Lucy's bracelet from the drawer again.
I placed it beside my phone.
The two objects seemed strangely connected, though I couldn't explain why.
One belonged to the child I had mourned.
The other had become my only link to the question of whether I had been allowed to know the truth.
I sat on the edge of the bed until the room grew dark.
I didn't pray for a particular result.
I wasn't sure I could bear to ask for anything so specific.
I asked for the truth.
Even if it hurt.
Especially if it hurt.
Because I had already lived five years with a story that might not have been true.
I couldn't spend the rest of my life doing it again.
Click here to continue reading: PART 6: The Second Test Was Supposed to Give Us Certainty, but Waiting for It Forced Me to Face What I Had Never Understood
My Sister Came to My Kitchen With an Envelope, and the First Thing She Said Made Me Fear the Worst
Part 5 of 12
