The boy stared at the woman in the gold dress, confused by the tears forming in her eyes.

“My mother gave it to me,” he said quietly. “Before she died.”

The woman’s fingers tightened around the photo.

“What was her name?”

The boy swallowed hard.

“Lena.”

The woman stopped breathing.

Behind her, the wedding music kept playing, soft and cruel, like nothing outside had changed.

But everything had.

Lena was the name of the young nurse who disappeared the same week the woman’s baby was taken from the hospital.

The waiter stepped forward, nervous now.

“Ma’am, should I call security?”

The woman turned to him with tears running down her face.

“No.”

Then she knelt on the cold ground in front of the boy, her gold dress touching the dirt.

The boy backed away, scared.

“I didn’t steal anything,” he whispered. “I promise.”

The woman shook her head.

“No, sweetheart. You didn’t steal from me.”

She looked at his face.

His eyes.

The tiny scar near his eyebrow.

The scar her baby had when she held him for the first and last time.

Her voice broke completely.

“You were stolen from me.”

The boy’s lips trembled.

“What?”

She reached for him slowly, carefully, not wanting to frighten him.

“I looked for you for eight years.”

The boy stared at the photo, then at her face.

For the first time, he saw it too.

The same eyes.

The same mouth.

The same pain.

His voice came out small.

“Are you the woman my mom told me to find?”

She pulled him gently into her arms and cried into his dirty hair.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I’m your mother.”