The moment I adopted Joey, I knew there would be challenges. But nothing prepared me for what happened at his first birthday party in our home. As he sat staring at his cake, the tears started flowing. “My birthday was yesterday,” he whispered. The records were wrong – and that was just the beginning of what I didn’t know.
That small confession led to bigger revelations: Joey had a twin brother named Tommy, separated when they entered foster care. All he had left was a hand-drawn picture of a lighthouse where they’d celebrated birthdays with their grandmother. So we went searching – two unlikely detectives following a child’s memory.
What we found changed everything. The grandmother who thought she was making the right choice. The brother who never stopped waiting. And the unbreakable bond between twins that time and distance couldn’t erase. That birthday cake didn’t just mark a day – it opened the door to healing Joey’s broken heart by reuniting him with the family he thought he’d lost.
