At my Johns Hopkins graduation, the parents who abandoned me in a hospital 15 years earlier sat in reserved seats and whispered, “She owes us this.” I simply adjusted my white coat and waited. Then the dean stepped to the microphone and announced a name they never expected to hear.
The first time I saw my biological parents after fifteen years, they were sitting in the third row at my Johns Hopkins graduation, pretending they belonged there.
My mother, Patricia Carter, sat stiffly with both hands clasped around her purse. Her knuckles were pale, her lips pressed into the same thin line I remembered from childhood whenever life refused to bend to her wishes. Beside her sat my father, Thomas Carter, wearing a navy suit that had become a little too tight over the years. He gripped the graduation program while scanning the printed names with the desperate focus of a man searching for a long-lost investment.
They looked older than I remembered.
