There is an organization — I won’t name it here, for reasons that will make sense — that helps women in situations like mine disappear safely, and helps their children disappear into good, ordinary lives where no one would think to look. They don’t choose randomly. They watch. They verify. For months before Lori was born, they were watching men like you — steady jobs, clean records, a temperament people trusted, no family that could be leveraged against you. The tow that night wasn’t a mistake in dispatching. It was arranged. Your shop was chosen because you worked alone in the bay most nights, because your boss trusted you completely, and because — and I want you to know this mattered more than anything — everyone who’d ever worked with you said the same thing about you unprompted: that you were kind to things nobody else had patience for. Stray dogs. Broken-down cars nobody else wanted to touch. People assumed that would extend to a baby. They were right.
Sixteen years ago I found a stranger’s baby in a car trunk — I never imagined she’d been left there for me.
