Neither of them moved.
“You remember me, don’t you?” she asked brightly. “I’m your mother.”
Jacob frowned.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Why do you think we’d remember you? You left us when we were babies.”
“I came to take you home,” she said. “My husband and I have decided to adopt. I chose you both. You’ll live with us now—private schools, new clothes, real opportunities.”
“Adopt?” Lily asked sharply.
“Yes,” Maribelle nodded. “I allowed your grandmother to adopt you legally back then. But my husband doesn’t know you’re my children. I told him that you were orphans.”
“You lied to him?”
I felt a surge of pride hearing them challenge her.
“Let’s not get caught up in technicalities,” she said. “All that matters is you’ll have a better life.”
“You mean with the woman who raised us?” Lily asked, stepping closer to me.
Maribelle’s smile faltered.
“You left,” Lily said. “You disappeared. But she stayed. And she loved us.”
“You don’t understand…”
“Oh, we understand perfectly,” Jacob said. “You’re not coming in here like you didn’t miss 15 years of our lives.”
“You’ll regret this when she’s gone and you’re stuck in this rundown dump,” Maribelle snapped.
“We’re not yours to take!” Jacob shouted.
“We never were,” Lily added, gripping my arm.
Maribelle’s face twisted with anger.
Then she stormed out.
A Week Later
A week later, everything unraveled for her.
My phone rang while I was cooking green curry.
“Helen,” the man on the line said gently. “My name is Thomas. I’m legal counsel for Mr. Dean. I believe you should hear what we’ve discovered.”
He explained that his team had searched adoption records.
There were none.
Instead, they found birth certificates listing Maribelle as the twins’ mother.
“Mr. Dean was shocked,” Thomas said. “He had no idea these were his wife’s biological children.”
Within forty-eight hours, Maribelle received divorce papers.
Her bank accounts were frozen.
Public records exposed everything.
One morning I opened the newspaper and saw the headline:
“Mother Who Dumped Babies Faces Public Shame.”
I closed it quickly before Lily or Jacob could see.
