My mother had paid Arthur Pendelton to draw up false adoption papers, and she had paid Pastor Higgins to stand beside an empty patch of grass and give me a place to leave three-dollar carnations every summer.

They had made a whole grave out of dirt and lies just to keep a church scandal from touching Evelyn’s good name, treating me like a mindless child who had no right to know her own life.

The memory from the county hospital in 1971 flipped over in my head, cold and clear.

They had carried the blanket behind a tall white screen while I was still struggling to sit up in the narrow metal bed.

My mother had picked her black leather purse up off the visitor’s chair, snapped the heavy brass clasp closed with a loud click and told me the baby was gone before I could even ask what she looked like.