She’d stopped, as if remembering that moment, so I nudged. “And?”

“And I just couldn’t let you go, Ryan. I finally faced the truth. We could have given our friends any number of excuses why I didn’t come home at the same time your sister did. Instead, right from the start, the story I’d chosen had made it possible to come back with a baby. My baby. From the beginning I’d left that loophole, just in case.”

“Why? Did you want to wave Wendy’s mistake in her face for the rest of her life?”

She covered my hand with hers, but briefly. “Ryan, it was much simpler. You see, by that time, you were mine in every way. I’d held you, fed you, talked to you for hours, sung to you. You knew my voice. You knew my touch, my smell. The nurses said you thrived whenever I was with you. Quite simply, I fell in love with you, and then your dad did, too.”

“You mean my grandfather.”

“No, Dale Gracey is your dad in every way that matters. And I am your mother.”

I tried not to be swayed. “And the adoptive family?” I guessed the answer. “They didn’t want a baby with all my problems, did they? And if they didn’t want me, who else would? Was guilt a part of bringing me home? You couldn’t abandon me to a system that might fail me?”

“Every day I say a prayer of thanks that the adoption fell through. I can’t imagine what kind of people they must have been. But by then I wouldn’t have let them have you, anyway, not even if Jesus Himself had come down to vouch for them.”

I sat silently for a while. She was answering my questions, but only as I brought each one to the surface. I had guessed much of this as I had time to reflect through a long, difficult night. But now I dug out another.

“So how did Wendy feel about you bringing me home as your daughter?” I turned. “And be honest. I need to know.”

She looked uncomfortable, but she nodded. “Not happy. Between Mexico and the United States there were a lot of legal documents to wade through, and that went on for months, so your sister had to be involved for some time.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “You and Dad are listed as my parents on my birth certificate.”

“After an adoption, the original birth certificate is amended.”

“You adopted me?”

“We wanted to be your real parents, your legal parents. Wendy was more than ready for that part of her life to be over. She didn’t want reminders.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to share you and Dad with a sickly infant, either. She’d had you to herself for her entire life. You doted on her. You were at her beck and call.”

“I can’t tell you for sure. After we brought you home, Wendy mostly went her own way. Oh, she came home from college occasionally. Sometimes she held you, even played with you or fed you. She would buy you cute little gifts, but she never treated you like you were hers. And she never stayed long. For years she found other places to be, other things to do. Part of that was Seabank, more or less the scene of the crime—”