That was her favorite phrase. It doesn’t matter.
By the time I was old enough to understand a family tree, I already knew mine had been reduced to a stump. No grandparents, cousins, or aunts. No old friends coming to visit and saying things like, “I remember when you were little.”
It was as if my mother had been born at 35, already fully formed, carrying me on one hip and a shopping bag in the other.
She always said, “You have no one but me. When I die, you will only have yourself.”
As a young woman, it seemed dramatic. As a teenager, it seemed cruel. At the end of her life, it simply seemed true.
Then she died, and her words became reality.
The funeral was intimate because there was no one to invite.
A few neighbors came. My office manager, Tasha, came and cried more than I did. The priest kept interrupting the service as if expecting a second line of mourners to appear at any moment. It didn’t.
That night, I returned to my mother’s apartment and sat on her bed.
Everything was in order. I found no photo albums or ribbon-tied letters. No hidden folders of family documents. Nothing.
I opened every drawer anyway.
At three in the morning, I found myself on the floor surrounded by tax forms, receipts, insurance documents, and old bills. A whole life, and none of it seemed to tell me who had come before me.
That’s when the obsession took over.
It all started with a thought I couldn’t shake: there had to be someone. A cousin in another state. An old friend. Anyone who could tell me my life hadn’t begun in a vacuum.
Three weeks later, I hired a private investigator.
His name was Keene. He was in his early sixties, with a weathered face and a voice so calm it made even the bad news bearable.
He listened without interrupting as I explained everything.
“My mother told me my father died before I was born,” I said. “She said there was no one else. No family. No records. Nothing.”
Keene leaned back in his chair. “And you don’t believe it.”
“I think she wanted me to believe that.”
He nodded slowly. “What do you hope to find?”
I looked at the metal shutters above his window. “Proof that I didn’t appear out of nowhere.”
He was silent for a moment, then said, “I’ll start with public records, immigration records, birth certificates, anything that connects to your parents’ names. Sometimes the truth isn’t well hidden. It only takes a little effort to uncover it.”
I paid his advance and went back to work, pretending my life was normal.
For the first week, nothing changed. I translated legal documents, discussed deadlines with a client, approved paychecks, and answered emails, while my mother remained dead and my questions remained unanswered.
Then I started seeing the car.
A dark gray sedan. It always stayed parked a little too long in front of my office or in front of my building. Once, it was parked near the supermarket when I came out with some oranges and a bottle of dish soap.
I told myself it was a coincidence.
Chicago is full of dark gray sedans.
Then I noticed the man.
The first time, he was across the street from my office, pretending to look in the window of a bookstore that had closed six months earlier. Mid-1960s, perhaps.
He was wearing a dark coat and had thinning hair.
His broad shoulders hunched slightly, as if he were trying to shrink. I only looked at him for a second, but something about the way he was staring at the entrance gave me goosebumps.
The second time, I saw him near my apartment building, standing near a bus stop, but he didn’t get on.
The third time, I was sure of it.
I left a bar on Clark Street and there he was on the corner, staring straight into my eyes. He didn’t smile or wave, he just watched me.
I stopped.
He looked away first.
