“Kidnapping,” Ethan said.
The word hit me like ice water.
My mother looked at me then with an expression I couldn’t place—until I realized it was fear.
Ethan pulled out another set of documents—photos, dates, an old newspaper clipping. MISSING INFANT: LILA MORENO. Beneath it was an enlarged image of the baby’s left shoulder. A crescent-shaped birthmark.
My hand flew to my own shoulder.
I had that mark.
My father saw it and lunged for the folder. Ethan yanked it back. The chair behind my father scraped loudly across the floor.
“You had no right,” my father shouted.
“No,” Ethan shot back, standing now. “You had no right.”
My mother began to cry, but the sound was wrong. Not grief. Panic.
I could barely hear my own voice. “Ethan… what is this?”
His expression softened when he looked at me, and somehow that frightened me more than anything. “Three months ago, I received an anonymous email telling me not to investigate you. It said if I loved you, I should look at your parents instead.”
My father went completely still.
Ethan continued. “At first I thought it was wedding sabotage. Then I found your birth certificate had been reissued two years after your supposed birth, and the original county file is missing. Your mother’s delivery records don’t exist. Neither do photos from before you were six months old. Every picture starts after they moved from Arizona to Ohio.”
I turned to my mother. “Tell me he’s wrong.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again, then whispered, “We loved you.”
That wasn’t an answer.
My father slammed both hands onto the desk. “We raised you. We fed you. We gave you everything.”
“You gave me fear,” I said.
His jaw tightened. “If you walk out with that file,” he said to Ethan, “you’ll regret it.”
Then Ethan slid the final photo toward me.
It was recent.
A woman in New Mexico stood outside a small adobe house, holding a worn flyer with the same hospital photo of the missing baby. Older now. Exhausted. Still searching.
On the back, in the investigator’s handwriting, were six words:
Birth mother confirmed. Wants to meet.
And beneath that, another line Ethan had kept from me until now:
Do not contact parents. They may become dangerous.
Part 3:
My father moved first.
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