“Had I not switched two babies, I would have been. In an effort to at least partially cover my tracks, ease my paranoia, and make things difficult for anyone searching for Bonnie O’Reilly, I convinced Rudy to move outside of Atlanta. I took a job at a new hospital and introduced myself to everyone there as Tess. Over time, I became Tess to all.” Politely, she moved a cookie onto her napkin. “May I ask how you found me?”

Leah gave Tess the SparkNotes version of her search.

“Ah.”

“Who else knows that you switched Sophie and me?” Leah asked.

“Just you, me, and God. The secret of what I did has been a companion invisible to everyone except me. Until now.”

“I’m inferring that our meeting at the middle school in Gainesville was not a coincidence.”

“No, it wasn’t. I often worried that what I’d done had impacted you and Sophie negatively. I looked for information on the two of you but never could find anything until I came upon an article featuring you as the brightest of the students who were attending Clemmons. I was delighted, truly, to discover that you were a math prodigy, to know that you’d flourished.”

Tess picked up invisible cookie crumbs with her fingertip. “But then, a few years later, around the time I learned that Sophie had gone to Vanderbilt and appeared to be doing very well for herself, I found you on the Internet as a high school teacher. In your biography, you said that you were caring for your brother, Dylan. That concerned me. I wondered why an eighteen-year-old girl was working full time and caring for her brother. I couldn’t let it go. I was retired by then, and Gainesville was just twenty miles from where Rudy and I were living at the time, so I took it upon myself to contact the PTA and volunteer in hopes that doing so would provide me an opportunity to meet you.”

“Which it did.”

“I struck up a friendship with you. When you told me about your parents and your brother, I felt responsible.”

“You were responsible for placing me with that family.”

“And I knew that I was. I liked you at once. And, of course, I liked Dylan at once, too. He reminds me of Ian. Pale skin, brown hair, brown eyes.”

Fresh understanding filtered in. Tess had always doted on Dylan.

“I wanted to help you, as a way to make amends for what I’d done and for your parents’ deficiencies. I also wanted to build a relationship with the two of you. Rudy and I have five granddaughters and we now have three great-granddaughters. Here was a boy. Here was another chance to know and care for a little boy. You and Dylan have made our lives, Rudy’s and mine, so much richer these last ten years.”