I gave 20 years of my life to two little girls after promising their dying mother I would protect them. I never imagined those same girls would one day use that promise to push me out of their lives.There was a moving truck in my driveway, and my name was written on every single box being loaded into it.I stood at the end of the front path in the early evening drizzle, still in my coat from the hospital, and I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.My daughter, Nika, was taping a box shut near the door. Her sister, Angela, was handing bags to the driver like she’d planned this.”What is going on?” I asked, my voice catching.

Neither of them answered. I stepped in front of the walkway and blocked them both.Angela held out her phone. She wouldn’t look at me, her eyes red-rimmed but dry, like she’d already done her crying before I arrived.”We can’t live with someone who lied to us our whole lives,” Nika said, staring past me.”What lie? Sweetie, what are you talking about?” I demanded, looking from one daughter to the other.That’s when Angela turned the screen toward me, and I felt the blood leave my face.I knew that handwriting before I even finished the first sentence.On the screen was a photo of a handwritten letter. Slanted, careful writing; my name at the top. From a man named John. I grabbed the phone from Angela and zoomed in on the words, my fingers trembling.In it, he introduced himself as the twins’ biological father. He had been deployed overseas while their mother was pregnant, and when he returned several months later, he learned she had died in childbirth and that his daughters had been adopted by the midwife who delivered them.