20 years ago, her infant son was abducted from a church daycare, and not a single trace was ever found. Delila Carter never left Charleston. Not really. Her body stayed, her job at the library stayed, her roots stayed. But something in her soul had wandered off the moment they told her her baby boy was gone.

She remembered how warm the air was that day in June, how she’d been running 5 minutes late because of traffic on King Street. She remembered the stale hallway smell in the church daycare and the way her heels echoed too loudly as she rushed down it. She remembered Sister Analise’s face already pale and crumbling.

“Elijah’s not here.”

Three words that didn’t register. Delilah had just smiled, confused. “What do you mean? I’m here to pick him up.”

The rest came in pieces. The empty crib, the back door, the security footage. a woman named Renee Wallace who had worked in the daycare for 6 months who everyone trusted who had left with the baby that afternoon holding him like a mother stroking his hair like someone who loved him and then nothing no leads no arrest. Renee disappeared and with her so did Elijah.

Now two decades later Delilah stood on the corner of Calhoun Street holding a reusable tote filled with books staring at the boy playing guitar under the shade of a jackaranda tree. His voice was deep but gentle with something old in it. Something that made people stop and forget where they were going.

That’s what happened to Delilah. One moment she was walking home from the library and the next she was just there frozen listening. She didn’t know why her heart was pounding. She didn’t know why she moved closer. But when the boy turned slightly, his face tilted toward the sun. Her breath hitched was the mark.

A bold, unmistakable birthark stretched from his right cheek across his eye and up into his forehead. It curved like a flame, vivid even in the shade. Delilah had once traced that mark with her fingertip every night before bed. It was how she’d memorize him.

That was her son’s face. The same face she dreamed about for 20 years.

She didn’t say anything, just stood in the crowd pretending to browse through her bag, pretending she hadn’t just had the wind knocked out of her. He sang something about Carolina rain and lovers who don’t wait forever. Then he nodded at the applause, gave a half smile, and packed up his guitar.

He was tall. He had the kind of skin that glowed with the son’s memory and the same cheekbones David had. Elijah’s father. It wasn’t just resemblance. It was echo rhythm. A note held between generations.

Delilah followed at a distance. Careful. Like a ghost shadowing the living. He walked four blocks over, cut through an alley, then into a quiet neighborhood lined with sycamores and old porches. He entered a small brick house with a faded red door. There was an older man waiting inside. White, gray-bearded, looked like a preacher or someone who used to be.

She stood behind a mailbox, her pulse tapping wild under her skin. What was she doing? She turned and walked home before she could think too long.

Her apartment was the same as it always had been, neat, small, lived in, but untouched. The picture on the fridge was still there. Elijah at 7 months wrapped in a yellow blanket. His smile gummy and tilted. The birthmark, bold and unmistakable, stretched across the right side of his face.

Even then, she poured tea but didn’t drink it. The window pane flickered as the street lights blinked on outside. Sleep didn’t come.

The next morning, she went to work and shelved books with her usual quiet care, but the boy’s voice haunted her. By afternoon, she’d convinced herself she was imagining it. seeing ghost projecting grief onto a stranger.

Then she saw him again. Same corner, same guitar, same voice. This time she didn’t stop walking. She passed by casually, eyes forward, but her ears strained for every note.

A young woman dropped a $5 bill in his open guitar case and asked his name. “Jalen,” he said. The name meant nothing, but the voice when he said it, it shook something loose inside her. “Jail.”

Delilah went back to her desk at the library and pulled out the box she hadn’t opened in years. It was tucked under the floorboard in the storage room. Inside, newspaper clippings, police statements, flyers, a baby bracelet, his hospital footprint, and a church bulletin from 2003, crumpled, yellowing. On the last page, a picture of the daycare class. Five toddlers sitting on a rug shaped like Noah’s ark. Elijah was second from the left.

She studied his face, then opened her phone, scrolled through her camera roll. A blurry photo she’d taken yesterday of Jallen from across the street. His head turned, light catching the same flame-shaped birthark climbing across the right side of his face. Identical. Her breath shivered out of her.

She called someone she hadn’t spoken to in 15 years. Miles Johnson answered on the second ring. His voice hadn’t aged much, but it was slower. “Careful, Delilah,” he said. “I always hoped this number wouldn’t pop up again.”

“I think I found him.”

Silence. “Then where?”

She told him about the street performer. The mark, the picture, the voice. “I know it sounds crazy,” she said, her fingers shaking, “but I’ve seen that face every night for 20 years.”

Miles said he’d come by the library tomorrow. Delilah didn’t sleep that night either. The air was too loud. Her heart kept whispering, “What if? What if? What if?”

In the morning, she stood in front of her mirror and studied her own reflection. Her cheeks were fuller now. Her hair held more gray than black, but the eyes were the same. The same as Elijah’s, the same as Jallen’s.

Delila sat at her desk, staring blankly at the computer screen as the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the library floor. She had gone through the motions, checking in returns, stamping due dates, answering questions from patrons. But her thoughts never left that street corner. That voice, those eyes, Jaylen. She whispered the name quietly to herself, testing the feel of it on her tongue. It wasn’t the name she gave her son. Her son was Elijah. But maybe, just maybe, Jallen and Elijah were the same person. She had to be sure.

Detective Miles Johnson arrived shortly after lunch, dressed in a plain polo shirt and slacks that suggested retirement hadn’t completely dulled his sense of professionalism. He looked heavier than she remembered, slower in his movements, but his eyes were as sharp as ever.

“You look good,” he said gently as he sat down across from her in the back reading room.

Delila gave a tired smile. “I look older. We both do.” She slid the picture across the table, the daycare bulletin creased down the center with Elijah’s baby face circled in blue ink. Then her phone, a photo of Jaylen under the jackaranda tree, the sunlight catching the bold birthark across the right side of his face.

Miles didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he let out a low whistle and rubbed the side of his face. “Damn,”

“I’m not imagining it,” she said.

“No,” he agreed, tapping the phone screen. “That mark, that’s not something you just find twice in a lifetime. It’s the same placement, same size, same jagged edge over the brow.”

“I thought I was crazy, but I saw him again this morning. I walked by. He smiled at a little girl, and I swear, Miles, it was like watching Elijah smile in the mirror.”

Miles nodded, but his face was grave. “Delilah, we’ve seen false hope before. Mothers who thought they found their child. Fathers chasing shadows. It’s not always a happy ending.”

“I know,” she said softly. “But I’ve never been this sure. I’ve never felt it this deep.”

He leaned back in his chair, thinking. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to talk to him, but I don’t want to scare him off.”

“You said he’s staying with an older white man.”

She nodded. “I followed him home two nights ago. I know it’s not legal. I know I shouldn’t have, but I needed to see where he went. The man looked protective, like someone watching over him. Not in a bad way, but I don’t know.”

“You get the man’s name?”

“No, just the address.”

Miles pulled out a small notepad. “Write it down. I can run it through property records, see who lives there, maybe get a history on the place.”

Delilah scribbled the address, her hand trembling slightly. “What if he’s involved? What if he bought Elijah or helped Renee hide him?”

“We’ll find out,” Miles said. “But we tread carefully. If this is your boy, he’s lived his whole life believing he’s someone else. We don’t want to break him.”

Delilah nodded, her throat tightening.

That night, she returned to the same corner and found Jallen tuning his guitar. He noticed her watching this time and gave a small polite nod. The kind you offer to a familiar stranger. She stepped forward slowly.

“Mind if I listen for a bit,” she asked.

He smiled. “That’s what I’m here for.”

His voice was easy warm. It settled into her chest like sunlight through a dusty window. She stood quietly as he played a few blues riffs. A soul melody she couldn’t name. Then a soft song about a woman waiting at a window, praying into the wind.

When he finished, she stepped closer. “You’ve got a beautiful voice,” she said.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“I’m Delilah,” she offered.

He gave her a curious glance. “Jaylen,” there it was. His smile, those eyes, she hesitated, then added, “You from around here?”

“Kind of. Moved around a bit when I was younger, but this city feels more like home than most places.”

“You ever go to church growing up?”

He shrugged. “A few, mostly small ones. My… My dad wasn’t big on religion, said the Lord never paid his rent.”

Delilah chuckled. It came out cracked and dry.

Jallen tilted his head. “You okay?”

She looked at him for a long moment, then said, “You remind me of someone I used to know.”

“Someone good, I hope.”

“The best,” she said quietly. “He was taken from me a long time ago.”

Jallen’s smile faded. “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be.”

He seemed uneasy now, unsure of what to say. She didn’t push further. Instead, she said, “If you ever want a quiet place to play, the library down the street has an old piano in the community room. It’s out of tune, but the room has good acoustics.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Thanks.”

She nodded and turned to go. But as she walked away, she looked back and saw him staring after her. His brow furrowed, thoughtful. Maybe something inside him stirred, too.

Back at home, she pulled out a shoe box from her closet. Inside were Elijah’s baby socks, a pair of tiny mittens, and a lock of hair she’d kept from his first trim. She ran her fingers over the brittle plastic of the hospital bracelet, the one that still said Carter. Elijah, male and faded type, and she picked up the photograph. Elijah at 7 months, bundled in yellow, smiling, his gummy smile, and the same deep birthark streaking from his right cheek across his eye up into his hairline.

In the silence of her room, she whispered his name aloud for the first time in years. “Elijah.” It didn’t sound like grief anymore. Sounded like hope.

Delilah didn’t sleep the night after she spoke to Jallen again. She kept turning over the moment in her mind. The way his voice faltered when she mentioned his mother. The flicker of unease in his eyes when she said the name Renee. She didn’t push him. She knew better. 20 years had taught her patience the hard way.

She spent the next morning in the library archive room, digging through newspaper clippings, trying to piece together the history that had gone quiet too soon. Miles had said Renee was listed under the care of George Hendrickx. She remembered that name now, not from a face, but from a footnote in an article about a private boy’s home closing down for non-compliance and ethical review. At the time, she had glossed over it, chasing more urgent leads. She had no idea was connected. Now the pieces wouldn’t stop moving.

She found a photo. It was in the Charleston Gazette from 2002, a church community benefit event. The caption read, “Pastor George Hendricks and youth volunteer Renee Wallace at Hendricks House donation drive.” They were standing close together, both smiling. Renee was young, still a girl really, but she was holding a bundled baby blanket in her arms. The baby’s face wasn’t visible, just a small sock covered foot peeking out, but something in the way she held it.

Delilah printed the page and tucked it into her bag.

Miles arrived just afternoon, sleeves rolled, jaw tight. He carried a folder with him, thick with notes. “You were right about Hrix,” he said, setting it down. “This man’s got more shadows than a cemetery at dusk.”

Delilah pulled out the photo. “This was the same year Elijah disappeared.”

Miles looked closely. “That baby in the blanket.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“We can’t make assumptions,” he said carefully. “But Delilah, this man was involved in shady placements. Some unofficial adoptions, transfers with no paperwork. I found two cases that just vanished. Kids moved into his home and never officially exited the system.”

“So why wasn’t he arrested?”

“Because people like him wrapped their crimes in scripture,” Miles muttered. “Small town cops didn’t dig too deep back then. If the paperwork looked close enough, nobody asked more.”

Delilah felt her stomach twist. “And now he’s got Elijah.”

“Maybe,” Miles said. “But we still need proof.”

Delilah hesitated. “Do you think Jallen suspects anything?”

“If he was taken young enough, he doesn’t know,” Miles said. “But from what you told me, the way he reacted to Rene’s name, that wasn’t nothing.”

Delilah nodded slowly. “Then we let him sit with it. Just a little longer.”

That evening, she went back to the street. Jallen was there again, later than usual, the sun already low behind the buildings. Fewer people lingered now. The street lights hadn’t quite flickered on yet, leaving everything bathed in the gold of early dusk.

She approached as he finished a soft bluesy ballad. His voice caught on the last line, and he looked up as she clapped once gently.

“You again,” he said, smiling faintly.

“You sound tired.”

Jallen shrugged, slinging the guitar case over his shoulder. “It’s been a strange week.”

“I’d imagine so.”

She walked beside him as he packed up. He didn’t stop her.

“Do you ever wonder where you came from?” she asked suddenly.

Jallen paused, then straightened slowly. “Sometimes.”

She said, “Nothing else. Just stood there while the moment stretched between them.”

Jallen glanced at her. “Why?”

Delilah reached into her tote bag and handed him the old photo from the gazette. The one with George and Renee. The baby blanket. The sock covered foot.

He took it puzzled. “That’s Renee,” she said. “That’s the woman you said was your mother.”

Jaylen stared at the photo. “This was taken 20 years ago.”

“She continued in Charleston. Same year my son was taken.”

Jallen’s lips pressed into a thin line. He didn’t look up. “This doesn’t mean anything.”

“No,” she agreed. “Not on its own, but it’s part of something bigger.”

Jallen handed the photo back. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

Delilah accepted it quietly. “I’m not trying to accuse anyone,” she said softly. “I’m just following something I felt in my bones since I first heard you sing.”

Jallen turned his face away. “Do you know what your full name is?” She asked.

He hesitated. “Jaylen Hendris. That’s the name George gave you. But do you remember anything else before?”

Jallen shook his head hard. “Look, lady, I don’t know what you’re looking for, but I’ve lived with that man my whole life. He raised me. He fed me. He taught me music. That’s my father.”

Delilah didn’t argue. She didn’t say the name Elijah. Not yet. “Okay,” she said. “I understand.”

Jallen shouldered his guitar and walked away into the fading light. Delilah stayed standing there long after he disappeared around the corner.

Later that night, Jallen sat in his room staring at the photograph again. He hadn’t thrown it away. Something about the woman’s eyes in the picture. Rene’s eyes unearthed an ache he didn’t have a name for. He’d never had a photo of her before. George never talked much about the past, only said she died giving birth and that the world wasn’t kind to girls like her.

Jaylen looked into the mirror. He pressed his finger gently to the dark birthark that bloomed from his right cheek, crossed over his brow, and disappeared into his hairline. Something throbbed behind his eyes. A memory, a phantom? He didn’t know. But for the first time in years, he felt like maybe everything he’d been told wasn’t the whole story.

George Hendrickx didn’t open the door right away. Jallen knocked again, louder this time until he heard the familiar shuffle of old footsteps behind the warped wood. The door creaked open just a few inches, and George peered out with one eye, suspicion etched deep into his leathery face.

“What’s with all the noise?” he muttered.

Jallen pushed his way in without answering, the photo already clenched in his hand. He moved past the cluttered entryway and into the living room, where the smell of dust and faded incense lingered in the air. George followed, closing the door behind him slowly. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

Jaylen held up the photo. “You never told me you knew this woman.”

George’s face didn’t flinch, but his hands twitched. “Where did you get that?”

“She was my mother. You said you didn’t have pictures. That she died giving birth to me. But you’re standing next to her holding a baby. That baby might have been me.”

George sat down slowly in his old armchair, his eyes settling on the photograph with something unreadable. “I didn’t lie,” he said after a long silence. “Not completely.”

Jaylen didn’t sit. “Start talking.”

George exhaled long and tired. “Her name was Renee Wallace. She came to me through the ministry program. Pregnant, scared, too proud to beg for help. I gave her a room. I gave her peace. When the baby came, she didn’t make it. Complications, bleeding. We didn’t get to the hospital in time.”

Jaylen’s voice cracked. “And then what? You just kept the baby.”

“I couldn’t send you into the system.” George said they’d split you up, hand you to strangers who don’t care. I saw what that place did to the boys I raised. I thought I could do better.”

“You forged everything.”

George didn’t deny it. “I made some calls. Knew a few people back then who could make it quiet. One paper says she gave you up. Another says she died nameless. Nobody came looking.”

Jallen stared at him. “That’s not true.”

George’s face twisted. “You think I kidnapped you, boy? Is that what you think this is?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.”

They sat in silence for a long moment, the clock on the wall ticking too loud between them. Finally, Jallen asked, “Was there someone else?” “Another mother.”

George blinked. “What?”

“Someone came to me. A woman said she lost the child around the same time. Gave me this photo.” He held it tighter. “She thinks I might be her son.”

George’s shoulders sagged. “This is why I didn’t want you digging.”

Jaylen’s jaw clenched. “You always said truth matters. That lies poison the soul. So what’s the truth, George?”

George rubbed his temples. “All I know is what Renee told me. She said the child was hers. Said she’d had to run. People were after her. Said the father was dangerous. I believed her.”

Jallen’s voice dropped. “But what if she lied?”

George didn’t answer. Jallen left the room and went upstairs.

Delila was already awake when her phone rang. The next morning, she hadn’t really slept, just laid still, her fingers curled around the hospital bracelet in the shoe box beside her bed. She answered on the first ring. Was Miles. “We got the judge to sign off,” he said. “We can request a DNA sample. It’s voluntary, but if Jaylen agrees, we can send it to the lab this week.”

Delilah exhaled, trembling. “That fast.”

“We pulled strings.” Miles said, “Cases this old usually take months, but I told them you’ve waited long enough.”

Delilah sat up. “Do you think he’ll do it?”

“I don’t know, but I found something else. George Hris filed for guardianship 2 months after Elijah disappeared. The child was listed as Jallen. No last name, no birth certificate, just an affidavit from a deceased mother. No followup. The system just let it slide like he knew how to hide a child in plain sight.”

Delilah said bitterly. “I’m going to talk to him today,” Miles said. “But I need something from you.”

“Anything.”

“Be there. When we asked Jallen to test, he’ll need to see your face. Not to convince him, just to see someone who’s telling the truth.”

Delilah hung up and sat in silence for a moment, heart pounding. She reached for the photo of Elijah on her fridge, the one where he wore the tiny yellow jumper with ducks on it. “I’m coming,” she whispered.

They met at a neutral location, a quiet room in the police station used for interviews. It was a simple space, plain walls, a table, three chairs. Miles stood in the corner, arms crossed. Jallen entered hesitantly, escorted by a younger officer. He didn’t look at Delila at first, just sat across from her, folding his hands.

Delilah offered him a glass of water, which he ignored.

Miles stepped forward. “Jaylen, we appreciate you coming. We’re not accusing anyone of anything, but we have legal authority to request a DNA sample, and we believe it could help clarify a very important situation.”

Jallen’s voice was low. “She said I might be her son.”

Delilah nodded, careful not to lean forward. “My name is Delilah Carter. I had a son, Elijah, who was taken 20 years ago. You You look exactly like him. You have a birth mark on your face, right cheek, over the eye into the forehead. It’s the same mark Elijah was born with. The same one I stared at every night for the first year of his life.”

Jaylen looked up at her. “I don’t remember anything.”

“You were a baby,” she said. “I don’t expect you to remember.”

He studied her for a long moment. “And if I’m not him?”

“Then you’re not,” she said gently. “But if you are, I just want to know.”

Miles handed him the paperwork. “We’ll send it to a certified lab. We’re expediting the process. results in 5 days.”

Jallen stared at the form. “And if I say no?”

“You’re not obligated,” Miles said. “But truth has a way of catching up either way.”

Jallen looked at Delilah again. Her hands were folded tightly in her lap, but her eyes were clear. He nodded. “I’ll do it.”

Delilah almost wept. Not from certainty. Not yet, but because for the first time, the door was finally opening. Just a crack, but enough for the light to get through.

The days between the test and the results were the longest of Delilah’s life. She tried to stay busy at the library, filing, shelving, helping patrons with research, but nothing stuck. The words on book spines blurred. Her hands fumbled over pages. At night, she stared at the ceiling, the shoe box of Elijah’s things resting unopened beside her bed like it had every year on his birthday. Only now, the weight of it felt different. Not like a tomb, but like a key.

On the fourth night, she got a call from Miles. “Results came in early,” he said.

Delilah sat down, heart pounding in her ears. “And?”

There was silence. Then, “It’s him.”

She gripped the phone tighter. “Elijah.”

“Elijah Carter. 99.9% match. He’s your son.”

The silence that followed was thick with disbelief. Joy didn’t come immediately. It was buried under shock under 20 years of cold mornings and unanswered prayers. “I… I knew it,” she said, her voice cracking.

“I’m coming to pick you up,” Miles said. “He’s waiting at the station. I already told him.”

Delilah stood by the window, watching the street below as dusk settled over Charleston. The air felt sharper than usual, like the whole city was holding its breath. She put on the same earrings she wore the day she first brought Elijah home from the hospital. Tiny gold loops her sister had given her as a gift. She didn’t know why. Maybe she wanted to carry some piece of that day into this one.

At the station, Jaylen sat alone in the same interview room. He looked up when the door opened. No guitar, no street corners, just a plain table between them. Delilah stepped in slowly. His eyes were rimmed red but dry.

“So it’s true,” he said.

She nodded.

“I don’t know what to feel.”

“You don’t have to feel anything yet,” she said softly.

He looked down. “Everything I know, it’s fake. My name, my story, my whole life.”

“No,” she said gently. “It’s yours, all of it. Even if someone else took the beginning away from you, the rest that belongs to you.”

He looked up. “Why would someone do that?”

Delilah took a deep breath. “Because some people think they know better. They convinced themselves they’re rescuing a child when really they’re stealing them.”

Jallen’s voice hardened. “George lied to me every day.”

“Yes,” she said. “He did, but he fed me, raised me, loved me.”

Delilah didn’t respond right away. Finally, she said, “You can be angry. You can be grateful. You can be confused. All of those things can live in you at once.”

Jallen wiped his face with the back of his hand. “I feel like I’m looking at a stranger,” he whispered. “But your voice, it’s familiar.”

Delilah blinked away tears. “I used to sing to you at night. You had trouble falling asleep unless I was holding you.”

Jaylen’s lip trembled. “Do you remember the song?”

“I remember everything,” she said.

He looked at her for a long time. Then he stood. He walked around the table and he hugged her. It wasn’t a dramatic hug. It wasn’t weeping or falling into her arms. It was quiet, careful, but it held 20 years of absence inside it. She wrapped her arms around him and closed her eyes.

“I missed you,” she whispered. Every second.

George Hendrickx was arrested. That same day, the police had gathered enough. The forged paperwork, the backdated affidavit, and now with the DNA confirmation, the proof that Jallen had been taken and hidden. Miles watched from across the street as George was led out in handcuffs, flanked by two uniformed officers. His expression was unreadable. He didn’t shout. He didn’t deny.

Inside the patrol car, George looked out the window and saw Jallen standing across the lot. Jaylen didn’t wave. He just stood still watching the man who had raised him disappear behind tinted glass.

The story broke a day later. Local headlines then national. *Black mother reunites with son 20 years after daycare abduction.* Delilah declined interviews. So did Jallen, but the community buzz. The church where Elijah had been taken held a vigil. Candles lit the front steps. Pastor Jameson, long retired, made a brief appearance to apologize. “We failed you.” He told Delilah and “we’ll carry that.” She nodded, but she wasn’t interested in apologies. She only cared about now.

Jaylen stayed quiet most of that week. He didn’t return to the street corner. He didn’t play guitar. He slept on the couch in Delilah’s apartment. Both of them too cautious to call it home yet.

They moved slowly like strangers learning each other’s rhythms. One morning, she made pancakes. “You love these?” she said as she flipped one.

Jaylen sat at the table staring out the window. “I think I remember the smell.”

Delilah smiled.

Later that afternoon, he unpacked his guitar and started tuning it. She didn’t ask. He played the same bluesy tune he had the first day she saw him on the sidewalk, but this time he played it softer, like the sound was meant for only one person in the world. Delilah sat quietly, hands folded, listening. And for the first time in two decades, she allowed herself to believe her son was home.

Jallen stood in the center of the nursery. It hadn’t changed much. The colors had faded. The wallpaper peeled at the corners, but the mural of stars and moons still wrapped around the walls. Delilah had never repainted it. Never converted it into something else. It had remained a room for someone who never came home. Now 20 years later, he stood there taking it in.

“I used to sit right here,” Delilah said quietly, placing her hand on the edge of the old rocking chair. “You’d fight sleep like it was your sworn enemy. I’d rock you for an hour before you’d give in.”

Jaylen’s fingers grazed the top of the dresser. It was low with a single teddy bear perched on top, still intact, but dulled with time. “I don’t know how to be a son,” he said after a moment.

Delilah looked up at him. “You don’t have to be anything. You’re already mine.”

He exhaled slowly as if trying to release something he couldn’t name.

They had been taking things day by day. There were no forced dinners, no tearful catch-up marathons, no expectations. They existed in the same space like two survivors brushing dust off an old photograph, careful not to smudge what was finally becoming clear.

Jallen had moved into the guest room. He hadn’t yet called it home, but he hadn’t left either. The apartment felt fuller now. His guitar leaned against the couch. A hoodie slung over a chair. His sneakers by the front door. He played music again, but only at night when the streets were quiet. Sometimes Delilah would wake up and just sit by her door listening to the notes float through the walls like lullabibis.

That afternoon, Jallen handed her something. It was the photograph of Renee and George from the newspaper clipping. The one with the baby in the blanket. “I’ve been thinking about her a lot.” He said, “Renee, she was just a kid. And whatever happened, she must have loved me. She had to.”

“She did.” Delilah said, “She chose to keep you. She brought you into the world. That means something.”

He nodded. “But I also think about what she took from you.”

Delilah hesitated. “I used to be angry at her, furious. I imagined every version of what she might have done, what she deserved. But the truth is, the man who raised her, he was the one who twisted things. He turned her into a tool. She wasn’t the architect of your disappearance. She was a scared girl in a broken system.”

Jaylen looked down at the photo, then folded it gently and placed it back in his pocket. “What happens to George?” He asked.

“He’s facing charges,” Delilah said. “Illegal guardianship, obstruction, falsifying documents. They’ll likely try him. He could see jail time or worse.”

Jallen was quiet. “I don’t know if I hate him,” he finally said. “I don’t know what I feel, but I know he lied. He stole my beginning.”

Delilah nodded. “You get to decide what to do with that truth. You don’t owe him anything.”

He glanced at her. “Do I owe you?”

The question hit her like a gust of wind. “You don’t owe me either,” she said. “This isn’t a transaction. I didn’t find you, so you’d give me something. I found you because I never stopped believing you were out there.”

Jaylen didn’t answer. You just looked at her for a long time.

That evening, they went out for dinner, a quiet place near the water. They didn’t talk about the past. They talked about food, about music, about the street corner he used to perform on. He mentioned wanting to record someday. She told him the library still had an old keyboard in storage.

Afterward, they walked slowly along the waterfront. The sky turned lavender, the lamps casting yellow halos on the sidewalk. Jaylen stopped at a bench and sat down. Delilah joined him.

He reached into his bag and pulled out a small notebook. Handwritten lyrics covered the pages, some crossed out, others rewritten a dozen times. “I want to write a song about this,” he said.

She smiled. “About what?”

“This? All of it. Losing myself. Finding you.”

He turned to her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“When I was a baby, what did I call you?”

Delila smiled, eyes glistening. “You didn’t say much, but when you started babbling, you said ma first. Not mama, just ma. Short and stubborn.”

Jaylen nodded slowly. He looked out at the water. “All right,” he said softly. “Ma.”

Delilah didn’t move. She didn’t cry. She just stared forward as if saying nothing would make the moment stay longer.

That night, Jallen played again. This time, she sat beside him. He strummed gently, humming the melody of a song still being born. And when he sang, his voice carried something new, something lighter, something clearer. The boy who had played for strangers on street corners was still there. But now he was someone else, too. Now he was Elijah and he was