“It looks nice on you,” Martha had said at the time. I remembered her voice. It was soft, but there was a strange look in her eyes that I didn’t understand back then. Now, it made perfect sense.
I walked back to the bedroom. I stared at the peeling wallpaper. My mind was spinning. The woman who made me school lunches, who taught me how to drive, who held my hand when I failed my algebra tests, was not my biological mother. She was a guardian angel who had kept a massive, terrifying secret for four decades.
I spent the next three days in a daze. I didn’t sleep. I barely ate. I kept looking out the window, half-expecting the blue Honda to appear.
But my birthday had passed. She wasn’t supposed to be back for another year.
Then, on Tuesday afternoon, I heard a car door slam. My heart stopped. I ran to the living room window and pulled back the sheer curtain. The blue Honda was there. It was parked across the street.
I didn’t think. I didn’t plan what to say. I grabbed the gold butterfly bracelet from the dresser, slipped it onto my wrist, and walked out the front door.
The air was freezing, typical November in Ohio, but I didn’t even grab a coat. I walked down the concrete steps, my slippers scraping against the driveway.
As I approached the car, the woman in the driver’s seat looked up. She saw me coming. She didn’t start the engine. She didn’t try to drive away. She just rolled down the window. Her hands were gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white. She was wearing a worn woolen coat, and her face was lined with deep, heavy wrinkles.
But when her eyes met mine, my breath caught in my throat. They were hazel. They had the exact same gold flecks near the pupil that I see in my own reflection every single morning.
