Some days, I held it before answering a call about another possible lead.
Then, at 49, I collapsed at work with terrible stomach pain.
I was rushed into emergency surgery.
The next afternoon, my surgeon checked on me. As he leaned over my chart, a silver cross slipped from his collar.
I saw the nick on one arm, and my heart monitor started bleeping madly.
I collapsed at work.
The doctor frowned.
“Are you okay, ma’am?”
I pointed at the cross. “Where did you get that? I put that cross in my son’s blanket the day he was born.”
His hand went to it.
I pointed at the cross.
“Did they ever tell you what really happened to him?”
“They said he’d been adopted.”
He pulled the chair closer.
“I was that baby. My father raised me.”
“Daniel!?” I struggled to sit upright. “How is that possible? He abandoned us.”
“They said he’d been adopted.”
His eyebrows lifted, and he leaned back.
“He’s not the parent who left me…”
Those words cut deep.
“I never had a choice. I don’t know what Daniel told you, but he was wrong.”
Fabian shook his head. “You signed papers giving me up. What’s there to be wrong about?”
“He’s not the parent who left me…”
“My father said I couldn’t come home with you. I’d just given birth. I had nowhere to go.”
I waited for the question I’d asked myself for years: why hadn’t I refused anyway?
Fabian nodded thoughtfully.
Maybe I could still prove to him that I was telling the truth.
“I searched for you,” I said. “I thought they’d changed your name. I didn’t know your father had you.”
“I had nowhere to go.”
Fabian stood abruptly.
“None of this makes sense. I need to step outside, make a call…”
“Wait! Pass me my purse, please?”
He fetched it from the cupboard, then stepped into the hall, already dialing on his phone.
I rummaged through my things.
“None of this makes sense.”
The paperwork I’d accumulated over years of searching was at home, useless to me now, but I had one thing I could show him.
I found the plastic bag containing the bootie.
It looked terrible… the yarn was faded and fraying, bright red nail polish covered the heel, and it had collected a few other stains over the years.
It looked terrible
I’d been afraid to wash it thoroughly in case the whole thing came apart.
I folded it between my hands and started crying. How could I offer him this stained old bootie as proof of my love?
Daniel had fed him, taken him to school, and sat beside him when he was sick.
I’d carried a bootie.
Fabian returned then.
I’d been afraid to wash it.
“What is that?” Fabian asked.
“Something I made before you were born. I wasn’t very good.”
I held out my hands with the bootie in my palms.
He lifted the plastic bag and stared at the contents.
“You kept it with you all this time?”
“What is that?”
I nodded.
A look crossed his face that I couldn’t decipher. He swallowed hard.
Then someone knocked on my door.
Fabian answered it.
“I’m glad you could come,” he said. “You really need to hear this.”
Someone knocked on my door.
He stepped aside.
An older man entered the room.
Decades had passed since I last saw him, but I recognized him instantly.
Daniel.
“You! You came back all those years ago, took our son, and left me behind?”
I recognized him instantly.
Daniel looked at me, then at the bootie.
His hand tightened on the doorframe.
“I came for both of you.”
“Then why did you disappear in the first place? Not even a note. I thought you’d abandoned us.”
“I told my parents about the pregnancy and our plan. They moved us out of state so you and the baby wouldn’t ‘ruin my life.'”
