The twins' eyes lit up instantly, like they had just been given the best news in the world. They turned to Giada, their faces glowing with excitement, and shouted in perfect unison:
"Mom!"
"Mom!"
My heart dropped.
"Mom…" I repeated under my breath, the word barely leaving my lips.
Hearing the children I had raised, the children I had loved, protected, devoted my entire life to, call another woman "Mom"…
It felt like being crushed. Completely.
I was the one who packed their lunches every morning. I was the one who stayed up through endless nights when they were sick. I was the one who held their hands through heartbreak, who sat through every school event, who kissed every scraped knee and soothed every tear.
And now.
Giada smiled radiantly, reaching out to smooth their hair, cupping their cheeks with a tenderness that felt like theft. "My kids," she said sweetly. "Now I don't have to sneak around like some criminal just to see you anymore."
My mother couldn't take it anymore.
Her voice broke as she shouted, raw and desperate. "Tessa! Adrian! Your mother is right here!"
She pointed straight at me, her eyes blazing with disbelief and pain. The crucifix pendant at her neck was white-knuckled in her other fist, the chain biting into her skin.
"She gave up eighteen years of her life to raise you!" she cried. "And now you're calling the woman who destroyed our Family 'Mom'? Have you lost all sense of right and wrong?!"
"Adrian," my mother said, her voice trembling so badly it sounded like it might shatter, "you were a sickly baby. Do you remember that? Of course you don't. You were always burning up with fevers, always crying through the night. There was one night, one night your temperature spiked to 104. It was pouring rain, a storm so bad no one dared step outside. And your mom," her voice cracked as she pointed at me, "she didn't hesitate. She wrapped you up, ran out into that storm, and carried you through the rain just to get you to the Family doctor. She didn't even think about herself."
Her words hung in the air before she turned, eyes red and swollen, toward Tessa.