I do not know exactly why I asked for it in that moment.

I think, on some level, I was looking for a reason, either a reason to do the enormous thing I could feel myself deciding to do, or a reason to be let off the hook, to hand her back and drive home to my quiet empty house and my comfortable empty freedom.

I did not yet know that the file was going to give me a reason larger than any I could have imagined, a reason that would turn a stranger’s abandoned daughter into my own family by blood.

But I want to say something here, before I tell you what was on that second page, because it matters to how I understand the whole of it.