PART 2: THE BIRTHMARK THAT BROKE MY ENTIRE WORLD APART
PART 2: THE BIRTHMARK THAT BROKE MY ENTIRE WORLD APART
The sponge floated in the bathtub.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
I simply stared at that tiny crescent-shaped birthmark on the woman’s shoulder as if my eyes were trying to convince my brain that I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was seeing.
Because I had seen that mark before.
Not on a stranger.
Not in a photograph.
On someone I had spent my entire life searching for.
My hands began shaking so violently that I had to grip the edge of the marble counter.
The woman noticed.
“Are you okay?”
Her voice was soft.
Confused.
Almost frightened.
I didn’t answer.
Instead, I reached beneath my sweater and pulled out the small silver locket hanging around my neck.
I had worn that necklace for twenty years.
Every day.
Every night.
Even when I slept.
Everyone assumed it was just a family heirloom.
Nobody knew what was inside.
Not Alejandro.
Not my closest friends.
Nobody.
My fingers trembled as I opened it.
Inside was an old, faded photograph.
A young woman smiling.
Holding a baby.
And beside the baby’s tiny shoulder was the same crescent-shaped birthmark.
The woman in the bathtub stared at the picture.
Her face changed.
For a moment, the years disappeared.
The fear disappeared.
The confusion disappeared.
She looked like someone waking from a dream.
“Where did you get that?”
Her voice cracked.
I lowered the locket slowly.
“My mother.”
The woman’s eyes filled with tears.
“No.”
One word.
Barely a whisper.
“No, that’s not possible.”
My heart was pounding.
“Who are you?”
She looked away.
Her hands tightened around the edge of the bathtub.
“I don’t know.”
The answer broke me.
Because I had spent twenty years knowing exactly who she was.
Or at least…
who I thought she was.
I sat down on the bathroom floor.
“My mother disappeared when I was sixteen.”
The woman looked back at me.
“She was supposed to pick me up from school.”
My voice became smaller.
“She never came.”
I remembered that day like it happened yesterday.
The empty school hallway.
The rain hitting the windows.
The phone calls that went unanswered.
The police saying there wasn’t enough evidence.
The investigators saying adults sometimes left voluntarily.
But my father never believed that.
Neither did I.
“My father searched for years,” I continued.
“He spent every dollar we had trying to find her.”
The woman covered her mouth.
A strange expression crossed her face.
Pain.
Recognition.
Fear.
“What was her name?”
I swallowed.
“Isabella.”
The woman closed her eyes.
And tears rolled down her cheeks.
“My name…”
She stopped.
Her breathing became uneven.
“I don’t know why, but that name feels familiar.”
I stood up.
“What do you remember?”
She stared into the bathwater.
“Fragments.”
“Tell me.”
She looked terrified.
“I remember a man yelling.”
My stomach tightened.
“A man?”
“Yes.”
She touched her temple.
“He was angry. He kept saying something about money.”
I froze.
My mother hadn’t been poor.
She had been married to a successful businessman.
My father.
“What else?”
The woman squeezed her eyes shut.
“I remember a car.”
“What kind of car?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where were you going?”
“I don’t know.”
Then suddenly, she gasped.
Her eyes opened.
“I remember you.”
My entire body went cold.
“What?”
She looked directly at me.
“You were little.”
I stopped breathing.
“You had a yellow dress.”
My knees almost gave out.
Because nobody knew that.
Not even Alejandro.
That yellow dress had been the last thing my mother ever saw me wear.
“You were standing outside a hospital.”
The room became silent.
“She told me to wait.”
The woman’s voice broke.
“She said she would come back.”
I covered my mouth.
Tears filled my eyes.
Because the woman sitting in my bathtub wasn’t a stranger.
She was the person I had cried for every night since I was sixteen.
“Mom?”
The word came out before I could stop it.
The woman looked at me.
And for several seconds, neither of us moved.
Then her face collapsed.
“No…”
She touched my cheek.
“No, my baby…”
That was the first time anyone had called me that in twenty years.
I fell against her.
I didn’t care about the water.
I didn’t care about the smell.
I didn’t care about anything.
I cried like the sixteen-year-old girl who had been left standing in the rain.
My mother cried with me.
“I thought I died,” she whispered.
“I thought I lost you forever.”
We stayed like that until Alejandro found us.
He was standing in the doorway.
Silent.
Confused.
Then he saw my face.
He looked at the woman.
Then at the locket in my hand.
“Mariana…”
His voice was careful.
“What happened?”
I turned toward him.
“My mother.”
Alejandro froze.
“The woman you brought home…”
My voice cracked.
“She’s my mother.”
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then he slowly stepped into the room.
“Isabella?”
My mother looked at him.
And something changed in Alejandro’s expression.
Something I had never seen before.
Recognition.
Fear.
“Wait…”
I looked between them.
“You know her?”
Alejandro didn’t answer immediately.
That scared me.
“Alejandro.”
He lowered his eyes.
“Mariana, there’s something I need to tell you.”
My heart sank.
“What?”
He walked closer.
“When I met Lucy at the soup kitchen, I didn’t just feel sorry for her.”
I stared at him.
“What are you saying?”
He took a deep breath.
“I recognized her.”
The room went completely silent.
My mother looked confused.
“I don’t understand.”
Alejandro looked at both of us.
“Twenty years ago, before I built my company, I worked on a construction project downtown.”
My blood ran cold.
A construction site.
The place my mother remembered waking up.
Alejandro continued.
“There was an accident.”
My fingers tightened around the locket.
“What kind of accident?”
His face became serious.
“A woman was found unconscious.”
Nobody spoke.
“She had no identification. No memory. No way to prove who she was.”
My mother covered her mouth.
“I spent years wondering what happened to her.”
Alejandro looked at me.
“Because I was the person who found her.”
I stepped backward.
“You knew my mother existed all this time?”
“No.”
His answer came quickly.
“I didn’t know who she was.”
He looked at Isabella.
“But I knew something about that accident was wrong.”
My heartbeat increased.
“What do you mean?”
Alejandro walked to his briefcase sitting near the door.
He opened it.
Inside was an old file.
Yellowed papers.
Photographs.
Documents.
He placed them on the table.
“I never stopped investigating.”
I looked down.
And my blood ran cold.
Because the first photograph showed the construction site where my mother disappeared.
The second showed a damaged vehicle.
And the third…
showed a man I recognized immediately.
My father.
Alejandro whispered:
“Mariana, your mother didn’t disappear because of an accident.”
I looked up.
“What?”
He pushed the final document toward me.
“She was trying to expose what your father had done.”
My hands froze.
“My father?”
Alejandro nodded.
“He wasn’t searching for your mother.”
Tears filled my eyes.
“He was hiding the truth.”
I stared at the papers.
At my mother.
At the life I thought I understood.
Then Alejandro said the sentence that changed everything.
“Your mother didn’t lose twenty years of her life by accident.”
“She was taken from you.”
And before I could ask who had done it…
my mother looked at the photograph on the table.
Her face turned pale.
Because she recognized someone standing beside my father.
Someone I had trusted my entire life.
TO BE CONTINUED
