PART 1 — THE BIRTHDAY GIFT

My name is Dorothy Peterson, and the morning of my sixty-ninth birthday began quietly in the upstate New York home where I had lived for decades. Since my husband Richard died, the house had become increasingly silent, but that morning the autumn sunlight coming through the lace curtains gave the rooms an unexpected warmth.

Most of my adult life had revolved around my son, Thomas. Richard and I adopted him when he was two years old after a terrible car accident took his biological parents, and from that moment forward, I devoted nearly everything I had to giving him the stable childhood he had lost.

I sacrificed savings, opportunities, and countless personal plans without considering them sacrifices at the time. Thomas was my son, and loving him had always seemed more important than keeping track of what I gave up.