Chapter 2: The Woman Who Didn't Touch Her Coffee
Four years, three months, and eleven days.
That was how long Damon Vale had been searching.
I only knew because the woman who found me told me so.
She appeared at the diner on a Tuesday morning, dressed too nicely for a town like ours, ordering coffee she never touched.
She watched me refill every cup at every table before she finally spoke.
"He never stopped looking for you, Nora."
I set the pot down slowly.
"I don't know who you mean."
"Your son has his eyes." She slid something across the counter.
"Damon found this."
It was a photograph.
Small.
Slightly creased at one corner.
My little boy, laughing outside the church daycare.
Someone had taken it without me ever knowing.
My hands went cold.
"He doesn't know about the child yet," she said quietly.
"But he will.
Unless you come back first and tell him yourself."
"And if I don't?"
She stood, buttoned her coat, and looked at me with something that wasn't quite pity.
"Then he finds out another way.
And you lose the choice of how that conversation goes."
May you like
She left the coffee untouched and walked out into the morning like she had never been there at all.
I stood at that counter holding the photograph of my son, and for the first time in four years, I felt the walls of my small, quiet life beginning to close in.
