I became a mother at seventeen—and my parents took my baby from me. Now, twenty-one years later, the man living next door looks exactly like the child I lost.

“I think I am.”

He asked the only question that mattered.

“Can you prove it?”

“Yes,” I said. “DNA, records—whatever it takes. But you need to understand one thing… I never chose to give you up. I was told you had died.”

He looked down at the blanket, gently tracing the yellow birds.

“My parents always said my birth mother was young… that she left this for me. No name. Nothing else.”

“They didn’t know,” my father added quietly. “They were deceived too.”