I kept replaying that question, the way Daniel’s voice caught on the word “fire,” like it carried smoke. His memories came in careful drops—our matching bikes, a blue plastic slide, the smell of marshmallows and gasoline. I told myself I was only being polite when I listened, but my body betrayed me: a flinch at certain sounds, a phantom heat along my arms, the certainty I’d once known his laugh.
When my parents finally confessed, it wasn’t cinematic. No dramatic music, just the small, ugly sounds of truth being dragged into daylight. They had chosen the version of me that survived on paper: the adoptable child, the clean file, the story they could live with. Daniel became the footnote they tried to erase. Now I stand between two lives—one I lived, one I lost—trying to decide which betrayal hurts more: what they did, or what I almost never remembered at all.
