“You stole me,” I said.

Gloria stepped forward. She didn’t scream. She didn’t physically attack her. She just looked at Helen with thirty-eight years of pure, unadulterated grief in her eyes.

“I spent my life crying over an empty grave,” Gloria said. “I blamed myself.

I thought my body had failed my baby. You let me live in that hell so you could play house.”

Helen started to cry, reaching out her frail, wrinkled hand to touch my sleeve. “Sarah, I raised you. I loved you. You are my daughter.”

I stepped back, pulling my arm away from her touch.

“Not anymore,” I said.

We didn’t call the police. The statute of limitations on the kidnapping and document fraud had run out decades ago. The legal system couldn’t touch her.

But I could.

The very next morning, I walked into the administration office at Shady Pines. I canceled my credit card authorization for Helen’s room.

I told them she had thirty days to vacate.

I helped her pack her things. I moved her to a state-funded facility on the outskirts of town. It is a gray, depressing place that smells of old cabbage and bleach.

She lives in a small room with a stranger now. She calls me every day, sobbing, begging me to forgive her.

I blocked her number.

I took the box of blue birthday cards from under my bed. I walked out to the backyard, put them in the metal fire pit, and watched them burn until they were nothing but black ash.

It has been six months since that day.

Rebuilding my relationship with Gloria is not easy. We are strangers, in many ways. We have thirty-eight years of missed memories to make up for.

But last weekend, Gloria drove down to Brunswick.

We sat in my kitchen, and she helped my daughter Chloe bake a peach cobbler.

I watched them laughing, flour smudged on Chloe’s nose, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was actually home.

We aren’t looking back anymore. The future belongs to us now, and we are going to make every single day count.