“Get out of the car right now,” my mother ordered while rain hammered the highway and my three-day-old twins cried in their car seats, and when I begged her to stop because the babies were newborns, my father grabbed my hair and pushed me out onto the road while the car was still moving…

My name is Abigail Foster, and the night my parents abandoned me on the side of a storm soaked highway with my three day old twins was the moment my life split into two completely different timelines, one where I was still the obedient daughter who believed family meant safety, and another where I learned that sometimes the people who share your blood can become strangers faster than anyone else in the world.

Even now, many years later, I can still remember every detail of that drive home from the hospital as clearly as if it were unfolding again in front of me, because trauma has a cruel ability to preserve moments with terrifying precision inside a person’s memory. The rain had begun as a gentle drizzle when we left Riverbend Regional Hospital outside the city of Cedar Ridge, Ohio, and at first it felt like an ordinary gloomy afternoon that did not seem worth worrying about.

By the time our car reached the interstate highway the sky had darkened so suddenly that it felt as if someone had pulled a heavy curtain across the sun, and thick sheets of rain began slamming against the windshield until the road became nothing more than blurred headlights and streaks of water sliding across the glass.

My younger sister Danielle Foster was driving the sedan, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that the knuckles on her fingers looked pale against the black leather as she leaned forward every few seconds trying to see through the storm. I sat in the back seat between two infant carriers that held my newborn twins Audrey and Caleb, both of them only three days old and sleeping peacefully with tiny relaxed faces that knew nothing about the tension building inside that car.

My body still ached from the delivery and every bump in the highway sent dull pain through my abdomen where my stitches pulled sharply, yet none of that discomfort mattered compared to the overwhelming relief I felt knowing my babies were healthy and close enough for me to touch.

My mother Deborah Foster sat silently in the passenger seat staring straight ahead without turning around even once, while my father Franklin Foster sat beside me in the back seat pressed close to the door as if physical distance could protect him from the embarrassment he believed I had brought upon our family.