I stopped breathing for a second. The words blurred on the page. I wiped my eyes and kept reading.

“Her name was Clara,” Martha wrote. “I promised her I would raise you as my own.

I promised I would never let him find you. But Clara couldn’t completely let go. She visits our street every single year on your birthday. She sits in a car across the road. She just wants to see you blow out your candles. She sits there for hours.”

I felt a cold weight drop straight to my stomach. My birthday had been just three days ago. I turned 42. I had spent the day alone in the house, grieving Martha.

I scrambled to my feet and ran to the kitchen. My hands were trembling so badly I almost dropped my phone. I logged into the Ring camera app on my tablet. We had installed the camera on the front porch two years ago because Martha was getting frail and wanted to see who was at the door.

I pulled up the archive for November 12th. I scrolled through the morning footage. Nothing but the mailman and a stray cat. Then, at 2 PM, a battered blue Honda Civic pulled up across the street. It sat there. The engine was turned off.

I zoomed in. A woman with short, silver hair was sitting behind the wheel. She was staring directly at our front porch. She didn’t look at her phone. She didn’t read a book. She just sat there, watching the house. She stayed until the streetlights came on, exactly two hours later.

I felt sick to my stomach. I went back to the previous year’s footage. November 12th. I scrolled through the hours.

There it was again. The same blue Honda Civic, parked in the exact same spot. She had sat there for two hours while I was inside eating a grocery store cake with Martha.

I remembered last year’s birthday clearly. I had walked out to the porch the next morning to grab the newspaper. Resting on the railing was a small, unmarked box. Inside was a gold-plated bracelet with a tiny butterfly charm. It was cheap, maybe $180 at most, but it was delicate. We thought the delivery driver had dropped it off at the wrong house. Martha had told me to keep it.