Ithought adopting my late best friend’s four children was the hardest thing I’d ever done, until years later a stranger appeared at my door. She told me my friend “wasn’t who she claimed to be” and handed me a letter. My late friend’s lies had returned to threaten the life we’d built without her.
Rachel has been my best friend for as long as I can remember.
There wasn’t a single moment when we became friends. We simply always were.
We sat next to each other in elementary school because our last names were close together in the alphabet.
In high school, we shared clothes. In college, we shared bad apartments and stories about even worse boyfriends.
Rachel has been my best friend for as long as I can remember.
When we had children, we shared calendars and cars.
“This is it,” Rachel once said, standing in my kitchen with one baby on her hip and another tugging at her leg. “This is the part they don’t tell you about.”
“The noise?”
“Love.” She smiled at me. “How it multiplies.”
When we had children, we shared calendars and cars.
I had two children. She had four.
She was tired all the time, but she glowed in a way that seemed real. Rachel loved being a mother more than anything.
Or at least, that’s what I thought.
You think you know someone after 20 years. You think friendship means transparency, but looking back now, I wonder how many secrets Rachel kept that I never saw.
Rachel loved being a mother more than anything.
How many times was he on the verge of telling me the truth? I’ll never know.
Everything changed shortly after Rachel gave birth to her fourth child, a girl she named Rebecca. It had been a difficult pregnancy. Rachel was on bed rest for the latter half of it.
Just a month after bringing Becca home, Rachel’s husband had an accident.
I was folding clothes when my phone rang.
“I need you,” Rachel said.
Everything changed shortly after Rachel gave birth to her fourth child.
“I need you to come now.”
When I arrived at the hospital, she was sitting in a plastic chair, with the baby carrier between her knees. She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“She’s gone. Just like that.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged her while she cried.
“I need you to come now.”
***
The funeral was on a Saturday. Rain lashed through the cemetery as Rachel stood with her children gathered around her.
“I don’t know how to do this alone,” she whispered to me afterward.
“You won’t be alone. I’m here.”
Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with cancer.
“I don’t have time for this,” she told me when she told me. “I just got through a nightmare.”
Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with cancer.
She tried to be brave for the children. She joked about wigs and insisted on going to school when she could barely stand. I started going every morning.
“Rest. I’ll take care of them.”
“You already have yours,” he protested weakly.
“So what? They’re just children.”
There were moments during those months when Rachel would look at me as if she wanted to say something.
“They’re just children.”
She would open her mouth, close it again, and stare into the distance, frowning.
She once told me, “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. You know that, right?”
“You are mine too.”
“I’m not sure I’m… a good friend.”
I thought she felt guilty because I was helping her so much, but now I know I was wrong.
“I’m not sure I’m… a good friend.”
***
Six months later, he was dying.
“I need you to listen to me,” she whispered.
“I’m here”.
“Promise me you’ll keep my children, please. There’s no one else, and I don’t want them to be separated. They’ve already lost so much…”
“I’ll take them and treat them as if they were my own.”
“Promise me you’ll keep my children, please.”
“You’re the only one I trust.”
Those words settled on me like a weight.
“There’s something else,” he said, his voice barely audible.
I leaned closer to her. “What is it?”
She closed her eyes. For a moment I thought she had fallen asleep. Then she opened them again and looked at me with such intensity that I felt a pricking sensation in the back of my neck.
“There’s something more.”
“Rebecca… keep a close eye on her, okay?”
“Of course”.
I thought she was worried because Becca was the youngest, still a baby, but those words came back to haunt me later.
When the time came, it wasn’t difficult to keep my promise to Rachel. She and her husband had no close relatives willing to take the children. My husband didn’t hesitate.
Those words came back to haunt me later.
Overnight, we became parents of six children.
The house seemed smaller, noisier, messier, but it was also fuller in a way I couldn’t explain.
But as the weeks turned into months, something changed. They became as close as siblings, and my husband and I loved them all as if they were our own. After a few years, life finally settled down again. I began to think we had made it.
But one day, when she was alone at home, there was a knock at the door.
After a few years, life finally returned to stability.
There was a well-dressed woman on the porch whom I did not recognize.
She was younger than me, maybe five years. Her hair was pulled back, and she was wearing an expensive-looking gray coat. But what caught my attention were her eyes. They were red, as if she had been crying recently.
He did not show up.
“You’re Rachel’s friend,” he said. “The one who adopted her four children?”
There was a well-dressed woman on the porch whom I did not recognize.
I nodded, but something about the way he said it gave me goosebumps.
He continued, “I know we don’t know each other, but I knew Rachel and I need to tell you the truth. I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
“What truth?”
He handed me an envelope and said, “She wasn’t who she said she was. You have to read this letter of hers.”
I stood on the porch with the door ajar, one hand on the doorknob and the envelope in the other.
I unfolded the letter.
He handed me an envelope.
Rachel’s handwriting was unmistakable. Reading her words, I felt like I forgot how to breathe.
I’ve rewritten this more times than I can count, because each version seems to say either too much or not enough. I don’t know which one you’ll listen to.
Keep reading.
I remember exactly what we agreed on, even though we’ve both told each other different stories since then.
You came to me when you were pregnant and barely able to stand. You told me you wanted your baby, but you were afraid of what would happen if you tried to raise her the way things were then.
I remember exactly what we agreed on.
I looked at the strange woman. “What is this?”
“Keep reading.”
When I offered to adopt her, it wasn’t because I wanted to take something away from you. It was because I thought I could keep things steady until you could breathe again.
My fingers curled around the paper. Wasn’t one of Rachel’s children hers? And I never knew?
We decided to keep it private. You didn’t want questions. I didn’t want explanations. I told people I was pregnant because it seemed easier than telling the truth. And because I believed it would protect us all.
Wasn’t one of Rachel’s children hers?
“So I wasn’t pregnant,” I said.
“No. Not from my little girl, and now that you know the truth, it’s time to give her back to me.”
Instinctively I stepped aside, blocking the door.
“That’s not going to happen.”
The woman took a step toward me. “I came here in good faith, without the police. But if you’re going to make things difficult…”
“I wasn’t pregnant then.”
Somehow, I managed to stay calm even though my heart was pounding and all my instincts were screaming at me to do something… to run away, to hide, whatever it took to protect my children.
“Rachel adopted her. I adopted her. That doesn’t disappear just because you want it to.”
“That’s what he promised me!” The woman pointed to the letter. “It’s all there.”
I forced myself to keep reading, even though part of me wanted to tear up the letter and pretend that woman had never knocked on my door.
“That’s what he promised me!”
I told you once that we’d talk again when things were better for you. That we’d work it out. I don’t know if it was kindness or cowardice, but I know it gave you hope. And I’m sorry about that.
All I can ask is that you think of her first. Not of what was lost, nor of what seems unfinished, but of the life she has now.
“I’ve turned my life around. Now I can take care of her, I swear!” The woman’s lip trembled.
And I’m sorry about that.
“He deserves to be with me, with his family.”
I thought about the four children upstairs and how carefully we had built this family. About the trust Rachel had placed in me. And about how she had kept this secret from me.
“He lied to me,” I said.
“Yes,” the woman replied. “He lied to everyone.”
“But he didn’t steal your daughter, and there’s nothing here that promises to give her back.”
“He lied to me.”
Her eyes lit up. “She convinced me to hand it over and told me we’d sort it out later.”
“You signed the papers. You knew what adoption meant.”
“I thought I would have another chance! I thought that when I rebuilt my life, when I could be the mother he deserved…”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I said, now more gently. “You can’t go back years later and undo a little girl’s life.”
“She’s mine,” the woman insisted. “She has my blood.”
“He has my name, he has brothers and sisters, and a room full of his things. We may not be blood relatives, but we are family, and I have the legal papers to prove it.”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
The woman shook her head, almost pleading. “You can’t do this to me! You were supposed to understand…”
“I understand. I understand what Rachel did and I understand what you’re asking, but the answer is no.”
“Don’t you even want to know which one?”
Rachel’s words echoed in my memory: “Rebecca… keep a close eye on her, okay?” It had to be her.
“It doesn’t matter, because now they’re all mine,” I said. “Every single one of them. And I won’t let you take any of them away.”
It had to be her.
“I have rights,” she said quietly. “Legal ones.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The adoption was private. There were irregularities. My lawyer says…”
“No! Whatever your lawyer says, the answer is still no.”
“You can’t…”
“If I can”.
We stared at each other.
“The adoption was private.”
I could see the desperation in their eyes, the years of regret and “what ifs.” But I also saw something else: the willingness to destroy what existed now for the chance to recover what they had lost.
Finally, he lunged at me and snatched the letter from my hands.
“I will return, and next time you will not stop me from claiming what is mine.”
The woman turned around and went down the steps.
I closed the door and rested my forehead against it.
The years of regret and “what if…”.
Rachel had lied.
She had kept a big secret, and now… now she would have to rummage through Rachel’s things to find the original adoption papers, and she would have to consult a lawyer. Just to be sure.
***
A year later, the courts confirmed what I had always known: adoptions cannot be undone because someone changes their mind.
Becca was mine, and her biological mother couldn’t claim her.
That day I walked down the court steps knowing that my family was safe and that no one could take any of my children away from me.
Adoptions cannot be undone because someone changes their mind.
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