PART 4 — THE SECRET
I stared at him.
“My mother?”
He nodded.
“You were adopted when you were very young.”
I shook my head.
“My parents told me they were my biological parents.”
“They weren’t.”
The lawyer explained that Margaret had died unexpectedly when I was three.
Eleanor had been barely forty.
She had tried to raise me, but she was struggling financially and emotionally after losing her sister.
Eventually, she believed the best thing she could do was arrange for me to be adopted by another family.
But there was a problem.
She couldn’t let me go.
So she remained in my life from a distance.
She followed my achievements.
She watched me grow.
She knew where I lived.
She knew about my career.
She knew when I started volunteering at hospice.
And she knew exactly who I was when I first walked into her room.
I put the
