“And then what, Ollie? If that’s where Vera went—to find her long-lost relative—then what? They find Vera, great. But they’ll take her from us because she’s not legally ours! Even though she was abandoned, a biological relation might want her back. Even if no one stepped forward to claim her, there’s no way they’d give her back to us after we kidnapped her. You’re not even considering the fact that one, possibly both, of us ends up in jail while some other family gets Vera. According to the law, regardless of which one of us confesses, we’re both complicit! Do you really want to risk losing her for good?”

“We’ve already lost her, Felicity! Don’t you see that? She’s gone! It’s been six months. I’d rather find her and give her up than never find her at all.”

Fifteen years ago, Oliver and I had made a pact. We had decided never to tell Vera the truth about her past, which quickly spiraled into our past. Back then it seemed like the only option, keep the baby and keep it hush-hush, because it was the only way we kept Vera with us and kept us out of jail. But now we were backed into a corner, down to one option: coming clean.

I had considered the DNA match possibility many times, weighed the pros and cons. But if a match was discovered through the criminal database, did I really want to surrender my daughter to a family with a criminal history? Present company excluded, of course.

I even wondered if perhaps Vera had obtained her own ancestry DNA report—they were easy enough to order online. I even dared to mention it to Detective Montgomery, asking if there was a chance Vera might have found some long-lost relative through a DNA database. When they scrubbed her computer and found no internet history or purchase transaction that would suggest a DNA search, I breathed a sigh of relief.

“The decision’s made,” Oliver stated bluntly.

It was a decision we had debated numerous times, and every time we circled back to the conclusion that one had nothing to do with the other. Vera’s biological past had nothing to do with her disappearance. Period. Because there were no dots to connect. No names to look up. Without facts, no good would come from telling the cops I had stolen a baby and never bothered to report it.