Mother: Evelyn B.
Infant: Male.
First name: Caleb.
I felt hollow reading it.
“My mom had a son before me,” Tara said quietly. “Nobody talked about him. I only knew something bad had happened.”
She didn’t accuse me. She didn’t insist. She just said it felt wrong for those papers to exist without meaning something.
I denied it. Hard. Said it was a coincidence, a clerical mistake, anything but this.
She left the box anyway.
I called my adoptive parents that afternoon. Asked questions I’d never asked out loud. They told me what they’d always been told—that my records were clean, that my biological mother had signed everything, that there was no one else.
I believed them. I still do.
But belief doesn’t stop doubt once it takes root.
Tara and I ordered DNA tests. Waiting was torture. On shift, I did my job. Off shift, memories crept back in—humming, whispered shushing, a door slamming. Things I’d buried so deep I’d convinced myself they were invented.
We met at a park. She handed me her phone.
Under close family matches, her name sat at the top.Family games
Sister.
My legs gave out. I sat down hard on the bench. The word Caleb landed under everything I thought I was.
We went to see Evelyn that same day. She was wrapped in a blanket, TV murmuring nonsense. When Tara said the name “Cal,” her eyes drifted to me.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then her face collapsed into tears.
I took her hand. Same grip. Same fragile strength.
“I’m here,” I said.
She shook her head, sobbing. “It wasn’t you. It was the system. I tried. They told me you were safe. They told me I couldn’t—”
“I know,” I said. And I meant it.
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