“How many times?”
“I don’t know. Maybe five.”
My stomach tightened. “An adult man has been meeting you at the park?”
“He’s old, Mom. And he’s nice.”
“That birthmark… I’ve seen it before.”
I looked at Mr. Lewis. “Who is he?”
His eyes returned to the photograph.
“I think I know. That birthmark… I’ve seen it before. But I need to be sure.”
“Sure about what?”
“Rachel, how much do you remember from when you were five?”
I stared at him. “What?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“Do you have baby pictures?”
“What does that have to do with Tyler?”
“Did your parents ever tell you about anything that happened before you started school?”
“Stop.”
“Did they ever hide anything from you?”
“You’re scaring me.”
“You’re crazy.”
He stepped closer. “That man didn’t choose Tyler by accident.”
“Then tell me who he is.”
“I can’t. Not until I’m certain.”
I grabbed Tyler’s hand. “You’re crazy.”
“Rachel…”
“Don’t call us again. Tyler isn’t coming back here.”
I pulled open the door.
“Go home and check your parents’ papers,” Mr. Lewis called after me. “Look for the year you turned five.”
I didn’t turn around.
“Did that man ever tell you his name?”
***
Back home, I sat Tyler on a kitchen stool and evened out his hair with the kitchen scissors, trying to keep my hands from shaking. He watched me in the little mirror on the counter, quieter than any eight-year-old should be.
“Did that man ever tell you his name?”
Tyler shook his head.
“Did he ever ask where we live?”
“No,” Tyler said. “He already knew.”
My scissors stopped. I didn’t ask anything else.
I put on a movie, and Tyler curled against my side. I stared at the screen without seeing it.
“Mom, why don’t we have pictures of me as a baby?”
***
A memory surfaced, uninvited…
I was nine, digging through a shoebox on my mother’s closet floor.
“Mom, why don’t we have pictures of me as a baby?”
She smiled that soft, careful smile she always used. “We lost a lot of things in the move, sweetheart. You know how your father is with boxes.”
Another memory, later…
“No, no, no.”
My father at the dinner table, cutting my pancakes even though I was twelve.
“Dad, when’s my exact birthday? Sarah at school said her mom remembers the hour.”
He chuckled, but his eyes flicked to my mother.
“I don’t remember the hour. I just remember you were five when…” He stopped. “Five pounds. About five pounds.”
I’d laughed at his mistake and forgotten it almost immediately.
“No, no, no.”
***
By eight, Tyler was asleep. I carried him to bed, checked the front lock twice, then went down to the basement.
It took nearly an hour to find the envelope with my name on it.
I opened it at the kitchen table.
The certificate was on cream-colored stock, with an official seal in the corner. My name. My parents’ names. And a date. I had been five years old.
“No,” I whispered. “No, no, no.”
I wanted my mother alive for five minutes.
I read it three times, waiting for the letters to rearrange themselves.
They didn’t.
My eyes went to my parents’ coats still hanging by the back door. For three years, I’d kept them there because moving them felt too much like admitting they were gone.
Now I wanted my mother alive for five minutes. Long enough to ask why she’d let me grow up believing there was nothing before her.
That was when I heard it. A soft crunch on the gravel outside the kitchen window.
I opened the door two inches.
I went still. A neighbor’s dog, I told myself. Then a shadow crossed the porch light.
I grabbed my phone and walked to the door.
“Who’s there?”
Nothing.
I opened the door two inches. The porch was empty, but near the mailbox stood an elderly man in a dark coat, hands folded beneath the streetlight as if he’d been waiting all night.
He took one step forward, and the light caught a large dark birthmark above his eye.
