75

Sierra's POV

Six months after the beach house. Six months of normal, happy, boring life.

I say boring like it's a bad thing. It's not. Boring is good. Boring means no ghosts. No trials. No fear. Boring means waking up and knowing the day will be full of small things. Grocery lists. School runs. Dinner with the people you love.

I've learned to love boring.

Katie was in eighth grade now. Almost done with middle school. She had a little group of friends who came over on weekends and ate all our snacks and giggled about boys until midnight. Louis pretended to be annoyed, but I caught him leaving extra snacks outside her door.

"She needs to eat," he said when I raised an eyebrow.

"She needs to sleep."

"She can sleep when she's dead."

"Louis!"

"Too dark?"

"Way too dark."

He grinned and kissed my forehead. "I'll work on my dad jokes."

The foundation was going well. Really well. We'd helped over two hundred kids in the last year. Kids with absent parents. Kids who needed someone to believe in them. Louis went to the events himself sometimes. Talked to the kids. Listened to their stories.

"You're good at this," I told him after one event. We were driving home, the city lights blurring past.

"I had good teachers," he said. "You. Katie. Even my mom, in her own way."

"Vivienne? Teaching you to be soft?"

"She taught me to be stubborn. You taught me to be human."

I reached over and squeezed his hand. "Sap."

"Your sap."

Life was good. Really good.

Too good?

That thought snuck in sometimes. Late at night. When everything was quiet. When my brain had nothing else to do.

Too good. Something bad is coming.

I never said it out loud. Louis would just worry. And probably nothing was coming. Maybe good things could just... stay good.

But then the letter came.

It was a Tuesday. Normal Tuesday. Rainy and grey. Katie was at school. Louis was at work. I was home, doing nothing important.

The mail came. Bills. Magazines. A catalog. And a plain white envelope with my name typed on it.

No return address.

My heart did that old thing. The skip. The freeze. The dread.

*Stop it,* I told myself. *It's probably nothing. A fan letter. Someone who heard about the foundation.*

I opened it.

Inside was a single photograph. Old. Faded. Creased.

It was a picture of a woman. Young. Pretty. Dark hair like mine. She was holding a baby. A tiny baby wrapped in a blue blanket.

On the back, handwritten in faded ink: *Me and my boy. Summer '85.*

My hands started shaking.

I didn't know this woman. I didn't know this baby. But something about her face... her eyes...

I turned the photo over again. Stared at the woman. At the baby.

The baby would be about my age now. Born in '85. Same as me.

*Stop it. It's nothing. A coincidence.*

But why send it to me? Why no note? No explanation?

I called Louis. He answered on the second ring.

"Sierra? Everything okay?"

"I got something. In the mail. A photo."

Silence. Then his voice, careful. "From...?"

"No. Not him. Different. Old. A woman and a baby."

"Who sent it?"

"I don't know. No return address. No note."

More silence. I could hear him thinking.

"I'm coming home," he said.

"It's probably nothing."

"I'm coming home anyway."

He was home in forty minutes. He found me at the kitchen island, staring at the photo. I'd made tea but hadn't drunk it. It was cold.

He looked at the photo for a long time. Turned it over. Read the back.

"Mean anything to you?" he asked.

"Nothing. But her eyes..."

"What about them?"

"They look like mine."

He looked at me. At the photo. Back at me.

"Could be a coincidence."

"Could be." I didn't believe it.

He sat down next to me. Put the photo on the island between us. We both stared at it like it might explain itself.

"We should find out who sent it," he said finally.

"How?"

"The postmark. It's local. City zip code. I can have someone check the mail facility cameras. See who dropped it off."

"Cameras at the post office?"

"We have people who can access them."

Of course they did. Louis still had connections from the old days. The scary days. I didn't ask questions.

"Okay," I said. "Do it."

He made calls. Quiet, efficient calls. People would look. People would get back to us.

Then we waited.

Katie came home from school. She saw our faces and knew something was up.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, baby." I forced a smile. "Just a long day."

"You guys are lying. Your faces are all weird."

Louis laughed. A real laugh. "She gets that from you too."

"Gets what?"

"The ability to read people."

"Oh." She shrugged. "Anyway, can Chloe sleep over Friday?"

"Sure."

"Can we order pizza?"

"Sure."

"Can we watch a scary movie?"

"Absolutely not."

She groaned and stomped upstairs. Normal. Perfectly normal.

I looked at Louis. He looked at me. The photo was in his pocket now. Hidden but not gone.

That night, after Katie was asleep, we sat in the living room. The photo was on the coffee table. We'd been staring at it for hours.

"Maybe it's a trick," I said. "Someone trying to mess with us. Like before."

"Maybe." Louis didn't sound convinced. "But this feels different. This feels... personal. Not scary. Just... personal."

"Her eyes really do look like mine."

"I know."

He picked up the photo again. Studied it under the lamp.

"The baby's blanket has initials," he said suddenly.

"What?"

He pointed. In the corner of the blue blanket, tiny embroidery. Two letters. I hadn't noticed before.

**L.C.**

L.C.

My initials are S.C. Sierra Crowe. But before I married Louis, my name was Sierra... no. My maiden name was Clark. S.C. Same initials.

But I wasn't born in '85. I was born in '86. And I never had a baby blanket with initials. I don't think. My mom never mentioned it.

"L.C.," I whispered. "Louis, that's your initials too."

He went very still. His initials. Louis Crowe. L.C.

We looked at each other. The same terrible, impossible thought in both our minds.

"This isn't about me," I said slowly. "This is about you."

"The baby is me?"

"Is that possible?"

He was adopted. I knew that. He'd told me once, early in our marriage. His parents adopted him as a baby. They never told him much about his birth mother. He never asked.

"I don't know," he said. His voice was strange. Shaky. Louis never sounded shaky. "I don't know anything about her. They never talked about her."

"The woman in the photo..."

He stared at her face. At the dark hair. The eyes.

"She has your eyes," he said quietly. "She looks like you."

We sat with that for a minute. The impossible idea taking shape.

His birth mother. His real mother. She looked like me. Like the woman he married.

"Is that why?" I asked. "Is that why you...?"

"Chose you?" He shook his head. "I didn't know. I swear I didn't know. I never saw a photo of her. Never."

"I believe you."

But something else was nagging at me. Something darker.

"If this is your mother," I said carefully, "who sent it? And why now? After all these years?"

Louis looked at the photo again. At the faded edges. The old handwriting.

"Someone who wants us to know," he said. "Someone who wants us to dig."

"Who?"

"I don't know." He rubbed his face. He looked tired. And lost. "I don't know anything right now."

I moved closer to him. Put my arm around him. He leaned into me, just for a second.

"We'll figure it out," I said. "Together."

"Together," he echoed.

The photo sat on the coffee table, watching us with those familiar eyes.

The next morning, Louis's phone rang at 7am. He grabbed it, listened, grunted, hung up.

"The post office cameras," he said. "They got a look at whoever dropped the letter."

"And?"

"It's blurry. But it's a woman. Older. Grey hair. She wore a hat and sunglasses."

"A woman."

"Yeah." He looked at me. "They're enhancing the image. Trying to get a better look."

A woman. Not Lyle. Not some ghost from the past we already knew. Someone new. Someone older.

My brain was spinning. Who would send Louis a photo of his birth mother? Who would have it? Who would wait all these years?

"Your adoption records," I said. "Can we get them?"

"They're sealed. I never tried to open them."

"Can you try now?"

He was quiet for a minute. Then he nodded. "I'll call my lawyer."

The lawyer called back at noon. Sealed records were hard to open. But with enough money and the right judges, anything was possible. It would take time. Weeks. Maybe months.

"We don't have months," Louis said after hanging up. "Whoever sent this wants us to act now. While it's fresh."

"Then we act."

We spent the rest of the day digging. Old files. Old names. Louis called his mother. Vivienne was surprised, confused, worried.

"I don't know anything about her," she said. "The adoption was handled by an agency. We never met her. Never knew her name."

"Nothing? No paperwork?"

"It was a closed adoption, Louis. That was the point. She wanted anonymity. We wanted a child. It was clean."

Clean. Nothing about this felt clean.

That night, we were exhausted. No answers. Just more questions.

Katie noticed. She was good at that.

"You guys are weird again," she said at dinner.

"We're fine, sweetie."

"No, you're not. You're doing that thing where you look at each other when you think I'm not looking."

Louis almost smiled. "You're too smart for your own good."

"I know."

After dinner, she came and sat between us on the couch. She put her head on my shoulder and her feet on Louis's lap.

"Whatever it is," she said, "we'll be okay. We're the Crowes. We're tough."

Louis and I looked at each other over her head. Our daughter. Our brave, smart, wonderful daughter. Trying to comfort us.

"Yeah," I said, my throat tight. "We're tough."

Later, after she went to bed, we sat in the dark living room. The photo was back in its envelope. Hidden in a drawer. But not forgotten.

"Whoever sent this," Louis said quietly, "they wanted us to find her. To find the truth."

"Should we?"

"I don't know." He turned to me. "What if the truth is ugly? What if she didn't want me? What if she was awful?"

"Then we deal with it. Like we've dealt with everything."

He took my hand. "What if I'm not who I thought I was?"

I squeezed his fingers. "You're Louis. My husband. Katie's dad. That's who you are. Nothing changes that."

He looked at me for a long time. The moonlight made his eyes shine.

"How did I get so lucky?"

"I ask myself that every day."

We kissed. Soft. Sweet. A promise.

The answers would come. Maybe soon. Maybe not. But we'd face them together.

Like always.

---

The next week, we got another letter.

Same plain envelope. Same typed name. This time addressed to both of us.

Inside was another photo. Same woman. Older now. Maybe in her forties. Standing in front of a house I didn't recognize. She was smiling. Holding a sign.

The sign said: *For Louis. I never stopped thinking about you.*

On the back, in the same faded handwriting: *1995. Ten years later. Still missing my boy.*

My hands were shaking as I handed it to Louis.

He stared at it for a long time. His face was pale.

"She kept photos," he said quietly. "All these years. She kept them."

"She wanted you to know."

"But why now? Why not ten years ago? Twenty?"

"I don't know."

He put the photo down carefully. Like it was made of glass.

"Whoever is sending these," he said, "they want us to find her. They're leading us somewhere."

"Should we follow?"

"I think we have to."

That afternoon, we made a decision. We would find her. Louis's birth mother. We would find out who she was. Why she gave him up. Why someone wanted us to know now.

It felt like opening a door we didn't know existed. Scary. But also... exciting? In a weird way.

A part of Louis I'd never met. A part of his story that was missing.

Maybe she was wonderful. Maybe she was terrible. Either way, she was real. And she was out there somewhere.

Waiting to be found.

Or maybe she wasn't waiting at all. Maybe she didn't even know these photos existed. Maybe someone else was pulling the strings.

Either way, we were going to find out.

The Crowes don't run from the truth. We run toward it. Together.

Always together.