She had brought Cara home. She had raised her with the full and uncomplicated love of a grandmother, without ever making the circumstances of their connection something Cara needed to carry or question.
Desiree had known the truth from the beginning. And in the years since Merinda passed, she had been doing what she had apparently always promised to do if the time ever came.
She had been looking.
The necklace was the only physical clue to where Cara had come from. Desiree had spent two decades researching it, showing photographs of it to dealers and historians and anyone who might recognize it. The pawn shop owner had been one of the people she had contacted years earlier, who had agreed to call her immediately if anyone ever came in with a piece matching the description.
No one had.
Until that Tuesday morning.
Until Cara walked through the door with her last remaining thing and placed it on the glass counter.
The People Who Had Never Stopped Searching
The following day, Cara met her biological parents.
She is not yet ready to share every detail of that meeting in full. Some things belong to the people inside them before they belong to anyone else.
