Confusion tore through the room like a storm. Our daughter had dark skin and soft curls—features that didn’t match either of us—or so I thought. Stephanie’s panic was raw and real, and though I wanted to believe her, doubt crept in like a poison. The nurse confirmed the baby hadn’t even been separated from Stephanie since birth, but that only deepened the mystery.
I saw my own dimple on the baby’s cheek, yet I couldn’t silence the storm of betrayal crashing inside me. I stepped out for air, and my mother’s sharp words only fueled my uncertainty: “That’s not your child.” I wanted to scream, to believe, to understand. Desperate for answers, I found myself at the genetics department, begging for a paternity test—anything to make sense of the impossible.