Moving quickly, listening for sounds of their return, I searched the rest of the office. I found nothing and sat back on my heels for a moment, thinking.

My parents' room. I ran upstairs to their cluttered room. Feeling like a thief, I opened the top drawer of their dresser. Jewelry, cuff links, pens, bookmarks, old birthday cards—nothing incriminating, nothing that told me anything I needed to know.

Tapping my lip with my finger, I looked around, framed baby pictures of me and Mary K. stood on top of their dresser, and I examined them. In one, my parents held me proudly, fat, nine-month-old Morgan, while I smiled and clapped. In another, Mom, in a hospital bed, held newborn Mary K., who looked like a hairless monkey. It occurred to me that I had never seen a newborn picture of me. Not a single one in the hospital, or looking tiny, or learning to sit up. My pictures started when I was about, what, eight months old? Nine months? Was that how old I was when I had been adopted?

Adopted. It was still such a bizarre thought, yet I was already eerily used to it. It explained everything, in a way. But in another way, it didn't. It only raised more questions.

I looked through my baby book, compared it to Mary K.'s. Mine listed my birth weight correctly and my birth date. Under First Impressions, Mom had written: "She's so incredibly beautiful. Everything I ever hoped for and dreamed about for so long."

I closed the book. How could they have lied to me all this time? How could they have let me believe I was really their daughter? I felt unstable now, without a base. Everything I had believed now seemed like a lie. How could I ever forgive them?

They had to give me some answers. I had the right to know. I dropped my head into my hands, feeling tired, old, and emotionally empty.

It was noon. Would they all have lunch at the Widow's Diner after church? Would they go on to the cemetery afterward to put flowers around the Rowlandses' graves and the Donovans', my mom's family?