PART 3 — BABY B
I sat Emma down and told her the truth I had carried for sixteen years.
When I was nineteen I gave birth to twin girls at Mercy Hospital in Lancaster. Two little girls. Baby A and Baby B. I had no money, no husband, and a mother who told me I could not raise two babies alone. She said the kindest thing I could do was let one of them go to a family who could give her everything.
I signed the papers in tears. They told me I would never know where she went, and that it was better that way. I kept Emma. I wore my own mothers locket every day since, with both their hospital photos inside.
For sixteen years I believed I had lost one daughter forever, and the whole time she was growing up a few miles away, with my eyes and Emmas crooked smile.
The girls had found each other on their own, at a volleyball camp, drawn together before either of them knew why. The twins everyone joked about really were twins.
I called Kaylas mother, once Emma said it was all right. She was gentle and kind. She had kept that hospital photo on the fridge for years, hoping the day would come, and she had always told Kayla she was loved by two mothers.
We met at a park halfway between our houses. I watched my two girls stand in front of each other for the first time since the day they were born, and then they were in each others arms, and I was holding both of them at once, the way I was never allowed to on their birthday.
I did not get to raise them both. But I got to see them found. And a locket I never took off finally has both my daughters standing on either side of it.