A possible family connection did not establish paternity.

And nothing would be decided without appropriate verification.

I thanked her and hung up.

Then I opened my laptop.

I had kept every document from the adoption process in a secure folder. I retrieved the original records and compared them with the report Daniel had given me.

Most of the information matched.

But one page was missing from his copy.

A page referenced in the index as an attachment concerning the biological father’s identity.

I read the index again.

Then I read it a third time.

The missing page might have contained nothing important.

It might have explained the confusion.

Or it might have answered the question Daniel had spent four years avoiding.

I called Rachel.

She answered immediately.

“Claire?””

“Did you know there was a missing page in Daniel’s report?””

Silence.

Then she said, “Yes.””

I closed my eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?””

“Because I never saw what was on it.””

“But you knew it existed.””

“Yes.””

I gripped the edge of the table.

“Rachel, I need you to tell me everything you know.””

She took a shaky breath.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you at the house.””

My stomach tightened.

“What?””

“The woman Daniel met at the hospital contacted him again a few weeks later. She told him the missing page had been located.””

I sat very still.

“And?””

Rachel’s voice dropped to a whisper.

“She told him that the possible connection wasn’t through his father.””

I stared at the wall.

“Then through whom?””

Rachel began crying.

“I don’t know, Claire. I swear I don’t. Daniel never told me what the page said.””

I swallowed hard.

“Then why are you crying?””

She was silent for several seconds.

Finally, she said, “Because I saw the name on that page once, before Daniel took the report away.””

My fingers went cold.

“What name?””

Rachel whispered a single word.

And suddenly, every assumption I had made about my children’s past began to fall apart.

Because the name she gave me wasn’t Daniel’s father’s.

It wasn’t even a name I associated with his family.

It was the name of someone I had trusted.

Someone who had been there during the darkest years of my marriage.

Someone who had known how desperately I wanted a child.

And someone who had never told me the truth.