We built our own lives anyway. Simon, engineering. Me, design. And still, on her sixtieth, I showed up with lilies, murmuring “maybe people can change.”
The front door was unlocked. I stepped in quietly, took off my shoes the way she’d always demanded, and I was about to call out when I heard her in the kitchen, talking to Grandma Rose.
“They haven’t suspected a single thing, Mom. Twenty years, and they STILL believed every story I told them.”
I stood frozen in the hallway, lilies in my hands, and I listened to the rest.
Chapter 2: Every Story I Told Them
I didn’t move. I barely breathed. And Beatrice, who had no idea her adopted son was standing ten feet away, told her mother everything, the two of them laughing over birthday cake.
“The best part,” Beatrice said, “is they think their mother threw them away. Mason still carries it. You can see it on him. Twenty years and he’s still trying to make me love him for it.”
