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Each couple sits in a pair of armchairs, but I can’t take the silence anymore, so I begin, “I had my past investigated.” I pause for a few seconds, then correct myself. “No, wait. Let me back up. I found my mother . . . Jesus!” I pause again. “I found the woman I thought was my biological mother. She’s been hospitalized in our hospital for a year, in a coma.”
“I know,” my father says.
“What?”
“Why don’t we start explaining, and you can fill in the gaps with questions as needed? You are our biological son, Athanasios, and you were kidnapped as a newborn.”
I leap out of my chair, and Brooklyn stands with me.
“Hey, let them speak. We agreed on this, remember?”
I sit back down, and my father continues: “When you were born, the world wasn’t like it is now—cameras everywhere, advanced technology. Regina?—”
“Is that her real name? Odin, Zeus’s cousin, gave me several aliases she used.”
“Yes, it is. Regina Blaster.”
“She’s American?”
“Yes. She was your nanny and stole you from us.”
“She has mental health issues,” I say, then immediately regret defending her.
He shrugs. “I don’t know if she already had issues back then because if she did, she hid them well—otherwise, we would never have let her near you. One day, we woke up, and you weren’t in your crib. She wasn’t anywhere in the house either. We turned the world upside down looking for you, but remember, it was a different reality back then: no social media, no advanced technology. Every time we got a lead on where she might be, she disappeared again. We never stopped searching, though, until one day, we got news of a boy who’d been hit by a car and taken to a hospital in Florida.”
“How did you find me so quickly? I remember you showed up after only a few days.”
“We had detectives working in every state, in all major cities. Whenever there was even the slightest chance you might have been spotted, we flew to that location. And one day, we found you.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“In addition to Regina keeping your real name—which is quite unique,” my mother says, “I just . . . knew it was you. Years later, we conducted DNA tests mixed in with your routine checkups. Not because it would’ve made any difference by then but because we were afraid someone might try to take you away again.”
I feel my throat tighten as I hear their story from their perspective.
What must it feel like to have your child stolen? To not know if they’re eating or if they have a safe place to sleep? I think I’d lose my mind.
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth? About the kidnapping, I mean.”
“Our lawyers knew the full story, but back then, in the early 1980s, paternity DNA tests didn’t exist yet. It wasn’t until 1984 that the first test was conducted.”
“Yes, I know.”
“So we opted for adoption to avoid exposing you. The woman who’d kidnapped you had disappeared, but we were still looking for her because she needed to be punished. We wanted closure. We planned to tell you the full truth when you were older.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
This time, my mother answers. “Maybe you don’t remember how you acted when you came to live with us, my son. You hated us. You went months without speaking to us, and following the psychologists’ advice, we respected your silence. Gradually, you began to trust me and your father. We thought everything was fine, that it was a natural progression. But then you started talking about her.”
I frown, recalling that phase.
I wanted to hurt them for not being my real parents. For taking away the right of the woman I thought was my real mother to raise me. Even though I knew, deep down, they had saved me from an orphanage by adopting me, they weren’t the family I wanted. I wanted the one woman I’d accepted as my mother.
I close my eyes, remembering how many times I pushed them away and isolated myself, especially from Medeia.
“There came a point when I preferred to let you hate me rather than destroy your illusion that she was your mother,” she says.
I hear a sniffle, and when I glance to the side, Brooklyn is crying. I’ve never cried as an adult. I think I forgot how, though my eyes ache at this moment.