It has been two long years since my daughter Grace, eleven at the time, passed away.

Everyone I’ve ever met told me the pain would eventually fade away. Not only it didn’t, but it has become even more intense. I simply accepted the fact that grief would always be part of who I am, because there is nothing I could do about it.

At the time Grace was living her final days, it was my husband Neil who took all the responsibility around her. He never let me seen her on life support. He claimed I shouldn’t remember her like that. Following her passing, it was him who took care of all the paperwork I had no strength to go through and arranged the funeral. He also decided on a closed casket, which meant I never saw my child again after he told me she was brain brain dead and off life support.

During those moment of pain and grief, when I felt like my entire world shattered into a million pieces, my brain was wrapped in fog and I wasn’t capable of making any decisions about anything, so I simply left everything to Neil.

We never had any other children. I told myself that I would never survive losing another child. Life has already taken so much from me.

Then, last Thursday something happened that made my world spin.

My landline rang, something that doesn’t happen often nowadays, and that jarring sound almost made me jump. Honestly, I almost didn’t answer the phone because I though it was an elderly relative, and I have no strength to engage in conversations with family who try to convince me I should move on and forget everything that happened.

From the other side of a line was Frank, the principal of the middle school Grace attended. “I’m sorry to bother you, but we have a young girl in our office who wants to call her mother,” he said.

My heart sank. “What girl? You have the wrong person,” I said quickly, even though my heart was already in my throat. “My daughter is deceased.”

There was a pause.

“She says her name is ‘Grace,’” Frank said, still hesitantly, “And she looks remarkably similar to the photo we still have in the student database.”

My heart was slamming against my ribs, and my voice was shaking, but I still said, “My daughter is deceased.”

“She’s very upset, please, just speak to her,” Frank said.

And then I heard the girl saying, “Mommy? Mommy, please come get me?”

The phone dropped from my hands to the floor. That voice…

At that moment, my husband entered the kitchen with the cup of coffee in his hands. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw my face and the phone on the floor.

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“It’s Grace,” I said. “She’s at her old school.”

Neil didn’t tell me I was imagining things. No. Instead, he went pale as though he had seen a ghost.

He picked up the phone and hung up as quickly as he could.

“It’s a scam. AI voice cloning. People can clone voices now. Anything. Don’t go there,” he said, and I could hear tension in his voice.

“But whoever it was knew her name,” I said. “The person on the phone sounded like her, Neil.”

“Obituaries are public domain. Social media is a thing. Anyone can get that information,” he said dismissively.

I grabbed my keys from the hook in the hallway, but he stood on my way.

“Babe, you can’t go,” he said in a state of panic. “Please.”

“Please what, Neil?” I said while my hands were shaking uncontrollably. “If she’s dead, why are you afraid of a ghost unless she isn’t a ghost?”

After that, he didn’t say anything to me. He didn’t say anything at all. He just looked at me with a desperate expression on the face before I pushed past him and ran to the car.

I don’t really recall the ride to the school, it’s still all blur. I don’t recall any traffic lights, stop signs, or anything else despite the heavy pounding of my heart.

My hands were locked onto the steering wheel, cramping from the grip. I arrived at the school, ran inside, and went directly to the principal’s office.

“She’s in the principal’s office,” the receptionist whispered to me.

I ran to Frank’s office, barging in without knocking.

And there she was. She had grown, of course. She stood about thirteen, a little taller and a little thinner, but unmistakably my Grace.

“Mom?” she whispered.

I knelt before her. “My Grace,” I sobbed, holding her close. She felt warm, solid, real. She clung to me as if I were going to disappear. “Why did you never come for me?”

“I thought you were gone,” I said through crying.

Grace stepped back a little. But then Neil stepped out from behind us, silent and tense.

“Dad?” Grace said slowly.

He gazed at her as if he wasn’t ready to believe in ghosts.

“You knew she was alive,” I said, feeling the urge to shake some sense into him.

“No,” he said weakly.

“Then why did you try to stop me from coming?”

“We should talk in private.”

“No.” I stood up, taking Grace’s hand. “We’re leaving.”

“You can’t just take her,” Neil said.

“Watch me.” I didn’t pay attention to what everyone else was thinking as they gazed at us in shock; I didn’t care.

We stepped outside and got into the car. At that point, I didn’t trust Neil and I wanted to just get somewhere away from him. So I took Grace to her aunt Melissa’s. I needed time to figure things out and collect myself from the shock.

Melissa, too, couldn’t believe her eyes.

“It’s really you!” she said while looking at Grace with the strangest look.

I said to Melissa, “I don’t know everything yet, but I think Neil’s been lying to me.”

“Please keep her here,” I pleaded. “He doesn’t know your address.”

“Please, please, please don’t let them take me again,” Grace cried.

“No one’s taking you,” I said.

Two years prior, Grace was admitted to the hospital with severe infection. I spent day and night by her side, praying to God not to take her from me. And then, out of the blue, Neil came home one evening and told me doctors delivered horrible news. They needed to place Grace on life support, but took her off of it shortly after because she was brain dead. I believed him. He was my husband, and I never doubted his words.

I recall sitting in the waiting room, with nurses and doctors speaking to me words that didn’t make any sense to me. At the time, Neil’s words felt like a prison and protection at the same time.

Two years after “burying” my daughter, I returned to the hospital where she was treated and declared brain dead. I asked to speak to the doctor, who was surprised to see me.

“Mary, I thought your husband had explained everything to you.”

“He said that Grace was brain dead. He said that she had been taken off the machines. I buried my daughter.”

Dr. Peterson took a deep breath. “Well, that’s not exactly what happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was in critical condition, yes. She had brain concerns. But she wasn’t brain dead. She had responses. Small ones, but they were there.”

“Responses?”

“Yes. Brain responses that indicated that there were possible chances of recovery. It wasn’t hopeless.”

Allegedly, Neil was too concerned for me, believing I wouldn’t handle the situation, so he made a decision to transfer Grace to a private facility and promised to tell me everything once she was fine again.

When I told him my daughter called me from her school, he said he had no idea what was happening to Grace following the transfer because Neil never contacted him again.

He then offered to give me all the records.

At that moment, the only thing I knew with certainty was that my husband lied to me.

When I finally gathered the courage to return home and confront Neil, he said he did it for mine and Grace’s sake. He claimed she was too damages, needed therapy that cost a fortune, and special schooling we couldn’t afford. So he gave her to a family who promised to give her all that we couldn’t.

“So you figured it was better that she died?” I spat.

“I didn’t kill her!” he shouted. “I found her a family. They were willing to take her.”

Back at Melissas, I spoke to Grace. I asked her where she had been and how she managed to get to her school.

She said she started remembering things but the people she stayed with kept telling her that she was confused. They kept her indoors and would barely let her out.

When she finally found a chance to leave the place, she called a cab and got to the school.

She begged me not to send her to that family ever again, as if I would ever do such a thing to my own child.

What I knew was that I could no longer stay by Neil’s side, not even a second longer. But I also wanted him to pay for the pain he forced me to go through for two years. So, I took the case to the police.

“Do you understand that this is a case involving fraud, illegal adoption, and possible medical violations?” the detective asked.

“Yes, I do,” I said. “I want him charged accordingly.”

Not long after, Neil was arrested, and I didn’t pity him.

The couple who adopted Grace didn’t know I was in the picture. They believed Neil was the only parent he had, and amid the fear of losing my child, I gave him the right to decide in my behalf. And I only did that because I trusted him, and that was my biggest mistake.

I filed for divorce and the court started restoring custody to me.

I want my story to serve as a reminder that mother’s fight is never over, not until everything gets right.

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Bored Daddy

Love and Peace