When I was four years old, my mother sat me on a bench inside a church and said, “Stay here. God will take care of you.” Then she turned around and walked away, smiling, hand in hand with my father and sister. I was too stunned to even cry—I could only sit there and watch them leave me behind. 20 years later, they walked into that very same church, looked straight at me, and said, “We’re your parents. We’ve come to take you home!”

The heavy, iron-wrought oak doors at the back of the nave groaned, the sound echoing sharply in the cavernous space.

Clara paused, a can of soup hovering in her hand. The cold, wet draft from the street swept down the center aisle, carrying a scent that violently clashed with the church’s ancient air. It was the sharp, synthetic smell of expensive, department-store perfume and high-end leather.

She stood up slowly, wiping her hands on her trousers, and turned to face the entrance.

Standing in the center aisle, silhouetted against the grey afternoon light, were the three ghosts of her past.

They were older, certainly. But the aristocratic, entitled bone structure was unmistakable. Her biological mother, her biological father, and her older sister, Sarah.

They were dressed immaculately in tailored wool coats and silk scarves, practically radiating a sudden, unearned, and aggressive wealth that felt obscene in the humble parish.

Clara froze. For a terrifying, split second, the twenty years evaporated. She was four years old again. Her feet were dangling inches above the hardwood floor, swinging nervously in a pair of scuffed, patent-leather Mary Janes. She remembered the scratchy feel of her cheap winter coat. She remembered her mother kneeling down, her face a mask of frantic, forced cheerfulness, smoothing Clara’s collar with trembling hands.