“They told me if I didn’t sign, they would tell the landlord about my situation and have me evicted,” Diane said, her eyes wet but her voice remarkably calm. “They told me a single mother in Zanesville would be ruined.

They said you would grow up in poverty, and it would be my fault. I was nineteen, Ellen. I was so scared. I thought they were right.”

“Did you ever try to come back?” I asked.

“I drove past your house every year on your birthday,” she said, a small, sad smile touching her lips. “I would park down the street by the park and just watch the front door. One year, I saw you riding a red bicycle in the driveway. You had ribbons on the handlebars. I wanted to get out of the car so badly. But your father had made me sign an agreement. If I contacted you, they would take legal action and move you to another state where I could never find you.”

I looked at the silver wedding frame on the table. The perfect, smiling couple in the photograph looked like strangers to me now. Their neat, quiet life was built on a foundation of absolute cruelty.

“I’m not going back to that house,” I said.

“What about the money?” Diane asked.

“It’s yours,” I said, pushing the manila folder across the table toward her. “It was always yours. We’re going to use it to sell that house, and we’re going to find a place of our own. If you’ll let me.”

Diane looked at me, and for the first time, a real, bright smile broke across her face. It was the exact same smile I saw in the mirror every morning.

“I’d like that, Ellen,” she said.

We walked out of the diner together into the cool Ohio afternoon.

The house on Maple Street was still sitting there, full of dusty furniture and old lies, but I was done cleaning it.

I reached out and took my mother’s hand. My real mother’s hand. And for the first time in thirty-four years, I felt like I was finally on my way home.