I thought adopting my late best friend’s four children would be the hardest thing I’d ever do—until a stranger showed up at my door years later. She said Saman “wasn’t who she said she was,” and handed me a letter. My late friend’s secrets had returned to threaten the life we had built without her.
Saman had been my best friend for as long as I could remember.
There wasn’t a single moment we became friends—we just always were.
We sat next to each other in elementary school because our last names were close in the alphabet.
In high school, we shared clothes. In college, we shared tiny apartments and endless stories about terrible boyfriends.
By the time we both had children, we shared calendars, carpools, and advice on parenting.
“This is it,” Saman once said, standing in my kitchen with a baby on her hip and another tugging at her leg. “This is the part they never tell you about.”
“The noise?” I asked.
“The love,” she said, beaming at me. “It just keeps multiplying.”
I had two kids. She had four.
She was exhausted most of the time, but she glowed in a way that felt real. Saman loved being a mom more than anything—or at least, that’s what I believed.
How many secrets did she carry that I never noticed? How many times did she almost tell me the truth? I’ll never know.
Everything changed shortly after Saman gave birth to her fourth child, a little girl named Reese. It had been a difficult pregnancy, and she had been on bed rest for half of it.
Barely a month after bringing Reese home, Saman’s husband was in a car accident.
I was folding laundry when my phone rang.
“I need you,” Saman said.
“I need you to come now,” she added.
When I got to the hospital, she was sitting in a plastic chair, holding the baby carrier between her knees, tears in her eyes.
“He’s gone. Just like that,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say, so I held her while she cried.
The funeral was on a rainy Saturday. Saman stood in the cemetery with her children clustered around her.
“I don’t know how to do this alone,” she whispered afterward.
“You won’t be alone. I’m right here,” I told her.
Not long after, she was diagnosed with cancer.
“I don’t have time for this,” she said. “I just got through one nightmare.”
She tried to be brave for the kids. She joked about wigs and insisted on doing school drop-offs even when she could barely stand. I started coming over every morning.
“Rest. I’ve got them.”
“You already have your own,” she’d protest weakly.
“So? They’re all just kids,” I’d reply.
There were moments during those months when Saman would look at me as if she wanted to say something but held it back.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. You know that, right?” she said once.
“You’re mine too,” I replied.
“I’m not sure I am… a good friend, that is,” she added.
I thought she felt guilty because I was helping her so much—but I know now I was wrong.
Six months later, she was dying.
“I need you to listen,” she whispered.
“I’m here.”
“Promise me you’ll take my kids, please. There’s nobody else, and I don’t want them to be split up. They’ve already lost so much…”
“I’ll take them, and I’ll treat them like my own,” I promised.
“You’re the only one I trust,” she said, and those words settled into me like a weight.
“There’s something else,” she added, voice barely audible.
I leaned closer. “What is it?”
“Reese… keep a close eye on her, okay?”
“Of course,” I said, thinking she was worried simply because Reese was the youngest. But those words came back to haunt me later.
When the time came, it wasn’t hard to keep my promise. Saman and her husband didn’t have close relatives willing to take the children, and my husband never hesitated.
Overnight, we became parents to six kids.
The house felt smaller, louder, messier—but fuller in a way I couldn’t explain.
As the weeks turned into months, something shifted. They grew close like siblings, and my husband and I loved them all as our own. After a few years, life finally felt stable again. I began thinking we had made it.
But one day, when I was home alone, there was a knock at the door.
Standing on the porch was a well-dressed woman I didn’t recognize. She looked younger than me, maybe by five years. Her hair was pulled back tight, and she wore an expensive-looking gray coat. But it was her eyes that caught me—they were red-rimmed, like she had been crying.
She didn’t introduce herself.
“You’re Saman’s friend,” she said. “The one who adopted her four children?”
I nodded, but something in the way she said it made my skin prickle.
“I know we don’t know each other, but I knew Saman, and I need to tell you the truth. I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
“What truth?”
She handed me an envelope. “She wasn’t who she claimed to be. You need to read this letter from her.”
I stood there, hand on the door, envelope heavy in the other. I unfolded it.
Saman’s handwriting was unmistakable. As I read, it felt like I was forgetting how to breathe.
“I’ve rewritten this more times than I can count,” the letter began, “because every version feels like it says too much or not enough. You came to me when you were pregnant and barely holding yourself together. You told me you loved your baby, but you were afraid of what would happen if you tried to raise her the way things were then.
When I offered to adopt her, it wasn’t because I wanted to take something from you. It was because I thought I could hold things steady until you could breathe again. We decided to keep it private. You didn’t want questions. I didn’t want explanations. I told people I was pregnant because it felt easier than telling the truth—and because I believed it protected all of us.”
One of Saman’s children wasn’t hers? I froze.
“So she wasn’t pregnant?” I whispered to the woman.
“No. Not with my girl, and now you know the truth. It’s time to give her back.”
I instinctively stepped sideways, blocking the door.
“That’s not happening.”
The woman stepped closer. “I came here in good faith, without police involvement. But if you’re going to be difficult…”
“Rachel adopted her. I adopted her. That doesn’t go away just because you want it to.”
“It’s what she promised me!” the woman insisted, pointing at the letter.
I forced myself to keep reading.
“I told you once that we would talk again when things were better for you. I don’t know if that was kindness or cowardice, but it gave you hope. And I’m sorry for that. All I can ask is that you think first about her. Not about what was lost, or what feels unfinished, but about the life she has now.”
“I turned my life around. I can take care of her now!” the woman said, lip trembling. “She deserves to be with me, her family.”
I thought of the four children upstairs and the life we’d built. About the trust Saman had placed in me.
“She lied to me,” I said.
“Yes,” the woman admitted. “She lied to everyone.”
“But she didn’t steal your child, and nothing here promises she should be given back.”
“Watch me,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. They’re all mine now. Every single one of them. And I won’t let you take any of them away.”
The woman lunged forward, snatched the letter, and walked away.
I closed the door, leaning my forehead against it. Years of regret, of what-ifs, felt like they were pressing down—but my family was safe.
A year later, the courts confirmed what I already knew: adoptions can’t be undone just because someone changes their mind.
Reese was mine, and her biological mother had no claim. I walked down the courthouse steps that day, feeling the weight lift. My family was secure. Nobody could take them from me.