“I don’t know,” I whispered.

Luke dropped the bracelet onto the table.

“How can you not know?”

“They took you both away before I could hold either of you.”

Ben pulled out a chair.

“Please sit down and tell us everything.”

Richard struck the door again.

“Ben, come outside now!”

Ben turned toward the hallway.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You have no idea what that woman did.”

I raised my voice.

“Neither do I, Richard.

That’s the difference between us.”

The pounding stopped.

Luke folded his arms.

“Start at the hospital.”

“I woke after an emergency delivery.

A nurse put one baby beside me and said the second child hadn’t survived.”

“Which baby was beside you?” Ben asked.

“You didn’t have names yet.

Your father and I named Luke the next morning.”

Ben glanced at Luke.

“So either of us could have been taken.”

“You were both mine.

That is the only answer that matters.”

Luke’s eyes hardened.

“Maybe you chose me.”

The words folded me in half.

I gripped the table, but my knees still gave way.

“Luke,” Ben said sharply.

“Don’t.”

“What am I supposed to think?

Richard says she took money.”

I covered my mouth.

“You think I looked at two babies and decided which one was worth keeping?”

Luke’s anger disappeared.

He knelt beside me.

“Mom, I didn’t mean—”

“Yes, you did.

You’re frightened, and you needed the fear to belong to someone.”

Ben crouched on my other side.

“Mrs.

Carter, I don’t believe you gave me away.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because my mom didn’t believe it either.”

He took an envelope from the box and placed it in my lap.

CLAIRE VALE had written one sentence across the front: For Helen, if Richard tells the boys she chose.

Luke helped me back into the chair.

“Open it, Mom.”

The letter inside was dated seven months earlier.

Ben read over my shoulder.

“‘Helen, you do not know me, but I have been raising one of your sons.

Richard told me Ben had been legally adopted.

I learned too late that this was not true.’”

Luke sat across from me.

“Keep reading.”

My voice shook.

“‘I never knew you had been told your second baby was gone.

If I had known, I would have brought Ben to you myself.’”

Ben wiped his face with both hands.

“She was sick when she wrote that.

She kept saying there was something she needed to fix, but Dad wouldn’t leave us alone.”

I reached across the table.

“Claire loved you.”

“She wasn’t my real mother.”

“Yes, she was.” I squeezed his hand.

“She raised you, protected you, and tried to bring you the truth.

Nothing we learn can take her place.”

Ben lowered his head.

A sob escaped him, and Luke moved around the table.

“Come here,” Luke said.

Ben stood, and the boys held on to each other.

I wrapped my arms around both of them, feeling two shoulders that should never have been separated.

“I’m sorry,” Luke murmured against my hair.

“You asked the question Richard wanted you to ask.”

“I nearly believed him.”

“Then we stop believing anyone without proof.”

Ben reached deeper into the box.

“There’s more.”

He removed a brass key attached to a bank tag and another folded note.

“What does it say?” I asked.

Ben read it aloud.

“‘The original records are in Box 214.

Take Helen and Luke with you.

Do not take Richard.’”

Luke picked up his phone.

“The bank opens at nine.”

Ben stared at the key.

“There’s one problem.

Dad is the executor of Mom’s estate.”

A knock sounded at the kitchen window.

Richard held up his phone from the garden.

On the screen was a photograph of a document bearing my signature.

Under it were the words: VOLUNTARY SURRENDER OF INFANT B.

Richard smiled through the glass.

Then Luke’s phone rang, and a woman said, “If Richard Vale is with you, don’t let him reach that bank box first.”