We stayed at the hospital until sunrise.
There were forms to sign.
Questions to answer.
Arrangements to make.
There was also a funeral to plan for a daughter I’d met only through photographs.
Before we left, I asked the doctor for one thing.
“Can I see her?”
He understood immediately.
Anna was in another room.
I walked in alone. She looked peaceful.
I touched her hand.
“I’m sorry I didn’t find you.”
Of course, there was no answer.
But I stayed there for a long time anyway.
When I returned to the waiting room, Michael was holding Lucy.
He looked at me.
“What do we do now?”
I looked at my granddaughter.
Then at Eleanor.
Then at Anna’s husband.
“We take her home.”
And we did.
Not because everything was suddenly okay.
It wasn’t.
I still had 22 years of questions.
Michael and I had a lot to work through.
There would be anger. There would be grief. There would be conversations neither of us wanted to have.
But there was also a baby who had lost her mother before she could even know her.
And somehow, after 22 years of believing I’d lost my daughter, I had been given a second chance to love the family she left behind.
Lucy came home with us that morning.
We put her in the nursery we’d once prepared for a daughter who never came.
The room had been used for storage for years.
I opened the closet.
At the back was a tiny pink blanket.
The same blanket I’d kept after the doctors told me my baby was gone.
I had never been able to throw it away.
I wrapped Lucy in it.
She opened her eyes.
For a second, she looked straight at me.
And I finally understood why Anna had chosen me.
