One evening, Dora caught Lily snapping her laptop shut and jokingly asked if they were planning a bank robbery. She did not push further, because they were adults now and deserved their privacy.
A week later, the girls came into her bedroom as she got ready for bed. Grace gripped her phone with both hands, Lily looked pale, and Grace asked her mom not to be angry.
Lily explained that they had been searching for their birth mother. They had requested the records they could access and taken DNA tests, and a close relative had matched with them.
That relative said her sister had given birth to twin girls around the time the abandoned baby twins were discovered at the airport. Every detail seemed to line up.
When Dora asked why they had waited to tell her, Grace admitted they did not want her to feel she was not enough. Dora took her hand and told them they never had to protect her from wanting answers about their own lives, even if that meant meeting the woman.
A Face From the Past
Grace turned her phone around to show a photo of their birth mother. The woman stood outside a café, older now, with shorter hair, but the small mole beside her mouth was impossible to miss.
Dora grabbed the dresser and cried out that it could not be her. Her knees gave way, and she dropped onto the bed while Lily reached for her.
The woman was Mara, the waitress who had brought her first Lily apple juice. She was the same woman who had picked up that paper flower and tried to straighten its stem on the last morning of her daughter’s life.
Dora remembered how visibly pregnant Mara had been and how tired she always looked. She had once overheard Mara asking the café manager for every extra shift she could get before the babies arrived.
She could not be certain Mara had been carrying the abandoned baby twins now sitting in front of her, but the timing fit. The DNA match pointed to a close maternal relative, yet only Mara herself could confirm it.
Lily’s shock turned quickly to anger. Mara had left them at an airport, and Lily wanted to hear her explain why. Grace wanted answers too but was not sure she was ready to face her.
Then Lily said something that silenced the room. If Mara could be kind to someone else’s little girl, why couldn’t she keep her own? Dora had no answer, and she refused to make one up.
The Paper Flower in the Dresser
The next afternoon, the aunt sent another message. She had told Mara that the abandoned baby twins had found her, and Mara agreed to meet, though she wanted to explain everything herself.
Her sister would not share the reason, saying it was not her story to tell. Lily was frustrated that Mara could make them wait after eighteen years, but both sisters decided they needed to hear it directly.
That night, Lily asked whether meeting Mara would hurt her mom. Dora admitted it might stir up painful memories, but said that was no reason for the girls to go without answers.
Lily said she did not want another mom. Dora reassured her that she did not have to know yet what she wanted from Mara.
Grace planned to write to Mara before meeting her, while Lily wanted to ask her questions face to face. Dora told them each could approach it in her own way.
After Lily left, Dora opened her dresser and took out an envelope. Inside was the paper flower she had found in her daughter’s coat pocket when the hospital returned her belongings, its stem still creased where Mara had tried to fix it.
