privacy and distance because the birth was difficult.

She said Daniel agreed.

She said…” Anna’s voice faltered.

“She said you didn’t want two babies.”

I heard a rushing sound in my ears.

“I gave birth to one child,” I said.

Anna stared at me as if I had spoken another language.

For a long moment neither of us moved.

Then she whispered, “No.”

I do not remember deciding to sit down.

I only remember realizing I was already in the chair by the table, gripping the edge hard enough to hurt.

Anna sank into the chair across from me.

She was pale now too.

Slowly, with the halting confusion of someone walking back through a nightmare, she told me what she had been told four years earlier.

She was Daniel’s cousin on Helen’s side of the family.

She had lost a baby late in pregnancy after years of infertility.

She had been shattered by it.

According to Helen, when I delivered, there were complications, and I had decided – with Daniel’s agreement – that one of the twins would be placed privately within the family.

Anna had been told it was a gift, a painful but mutual arrangement that would spare everyone gossip and legal trouble.

Eva had come to her through Helen and a doctor connected to the family clinic.

Twins.

The word landed and echoed.

I suddenly remembered fragments I had dismissed for years because they made no sense.

The birth had been an emergency C-section after a long labor.

I had been heavily medicated.

At one point, before everything went dark, I remembered hearing more than one cry.

I remembered a nurse saying something about “Baby B” and Helen telling me later that I was confused from anesthesia.

I had accepted the version of events they handed me because I had been exhausted, bleeding, terrified, and dependent on them.

Anna was crying now, softly and continuously.

“I thought you knew,” she said.

“I thought that was the only way any of this could happen.

I thought if I asked questions, they would take her away from me.”

I looked toward the ceiling, toward the room where the child who might be my daughter was sleeping, and felt grief so large it was almost soundless.

“I want a DNA test,” I said.

Anna nodded immediately.

“Yes.”

We did the cheek swabs the next morning.

Those three days of waiting were the longest of my life.

Daniel knew something had changed, but I refused to explain until I had proof.

He followed me from room to room asking what was wrong.

Helen called twice a day.

I ignored both of them and searched through every box of old paperwork in the house.

At the bottom of a filing drawer, I found my discharge packet from the clinic where Lily had been born.

Daniel’s family had insisted on using their preferred private hospital because Helen knew the staff and could “make sure I was taken care of properly.” I had never thought about that choice again.

Now I did.

Several pages were photocopies.

A few page numbers were missing.

One form referenced neonatal notes that were not included.

On the anesthesia summary, there was a handwritten notation in the margin: B transferred.

No explanation.

No initials I recognized.

I took