PART 3   I stared at the hospital bracelet in the lunchbox until the letters of my own name blurred.

Avery Grace Collins.

I had seen old baby pictures before.

I had seen my mother holding me in a yellow blanket.

I had heard the story of my birth a hundred times, always the same version.

“You came early,” Mom used to say. “You were tiny, loud, and stubborn.”

Whenever I asked about my father, her answer stayed short.

“He wasn’t ready to be a father.”

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