Lauren did not go to the hospital that morning.
She sat on the kitchen floor until her phone rang. Her mother. She let it go to voicemail.
Then she drove to her parents' house.
Her mother opened the door smiling, ready to leave for the hospital. The smile disappeared the moment she saw Lauren's face.
"I need you to look at something," Lauren said.
She held up the phone. The DNA results. The number that kept repeating in her head like a skipping record.
Zero percent.
Her mother did not reach for the phone.
That was how Lauren knew.
"How long?" Lauren asked.
Her mother sat down on the porch steps. Slowly, like her body had become very heavy.
"Since the beginning," she whispered. "You were three days old."
Lauren had been adopted. Not through an agency — through a quiet arrangement between her parents and a young couple who had no other choice.
"Who were they?" Lauren asked. "My biological parents."
Her mother looked up. Her eyes were red but steady.
"They were our closest friends," she said. "They died in a car accident when you were four months old. They had asked us — before the accident, almost as a joke — if anything ever happened, would we take you. We said yes. We didn't think we'd ever have to mean it."
Lauren sat down next to her mother on the steps.
Neither of them spoke for a long time.
"Were you ever going to tell me?" Lauren finally asked.
Her mother reached over and took her hand.
"We were afraid," she said simply. "That you would love us less."
Lauren looked at her mother's hand over hers. The hand that had held her through every fever, every nightmare, every heartbreak.
"Is Dad awake?" she asked.
"He's been waiting all morning," her mother said.
Lauren stood up and picked up her bag.
"Then let's not make him wait any longer."
The surgery was still on.
PART 3 tomorrow — the final chapter 🕐
Does the surgery go through? And what happens when Lauren discovers she is not the only one who received DNA results that morning?
Follow the page. You won't see this ending coming.
❤️ Share this if you believe love is a choice, not a bloodline.
Part 3 drops tomorrow. 🙏
