I am right-handed.

She had known that from the very first day.

“Did you ever know anyone from my father’s side of the family?”

I tried to keep my voice as casual as possible.

Her hand did not pause as she wiped down the table.

“No, sweetheart. The agency sent me here. I didn’t know anyone.”

“What was the name of the agency?”

“Emily, drink your porridge before it gets cold.”

She had avoided the question.

That night, when Daniel got home from work, I pulled him into our bedroom.

“Don’t you think there’s something strange about Ms. Parker?”

Daniel had just taken off his jacket. He paused.

“She seems fine to me. Honestly, she takes care of everyone better than most people take care of their own families.”

“Don’t you think… she knows my dad a little too well?”

“Your dad’s food preferences? That’s not weird. You ask a few questions, you figure it out.”

“She never asked.”

I looked straight at him.

“From the very first day she got here, she already knew he doesn’t eat green onions, doesn’t eat sugar, and only likes millet porridge if it has red dates in it.”

Daniel went quiet for a moment. His brows slowly drew together.

“So what are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But I want to find out.”

He hung his jacket on the rack.

“Why don’t you just ask your dad directly?”

“No.”

I shook my head.

If my father knew the answer, he would not have gone silent at lunch.

That look on his face…

it had not been surprise.

It had been guilt.

The next morning, my mother came back from the market with two fresh trout.

“Ms. Parker, make trout soup for lunch, okay? My daughter’s still not producing enough milk.”

“Yes, Mrs. Bennett, I’ll clean them now.”

The nanny took the fish with practiced ease.

I sat in the living room breastfeeding my baby, quietly watching.

In the kitchen, while she was scaling the fish, my father came out of the study carrying a mug of tea.

As he passed the doorway, his steps slowed.

The nanny had her back to him. Her hands were wet from the fish, and she was bent over the sink.

His lips moved.

But no sound came out.

Then he walked over and turned the faucet for her.

The nanny looked up at him.

Just one glance.

Less than a second.

But I saw it clearly.

She smiled.

Not the polite smile staff give employers.

It was something older than that.

Something softer.

Something faint and private.

Like a page of memory being turned by the wind.

My mother was out on the balcony hanging laundry, completely unaware.

I lowered my head.

My nose stung all of a sudden.

Not because I was moved.

Because I was afraid.

From that day on, I began paying attention to every tiny detail about the nanny.

The wallpaper on her phone’s lock screen was a photo of a young man.

Buzz cut.

Square jaw.

Heavy brows.

His features gave me a strange feeling of familiarity, like I had seen that face somewhere before but could not yet place it.

At the time, I still had not connected the dots.

On the tenth day, while she was in the shower, I picked up the phone she had left on the coffee table in the living room.

There was no passcode.

The first pinned contact in her messages was someone named Tommy.

The most recent message had come in at eleven the night before.

Mom, don’t worry about the money. I’ll figure something out.

I scrolled up.

There was a photo.

A young man standing in front of an old brick building, smiling awkwardly at the camera.

It was the same face as the one on the lock screen.

I stared at the picture for a very long time.

The thick eyebrows.

The square face.

Even the tiny mole near the corner of his mouth.

My father had a mole in the exact same place.

The water in the bathroom suddenly stopped.

I put the phone back so fast my hands almost slipped, my heart pounding so hard it felt like it might shake the whole room.

That night, I could not sleep.

At two in the morning, I sat up and began digging through old family photos of my father when he was young.

Finally, I found a black-and-white photo from 1992.

My father was twenty-three then, fresh out of school and working at a distillery. He was standing in front of the plant gates, wearing a white button-down shirt.

Heavy brows.

Square face.

A mole at the corner of his mouth.

I opened my phone again and looked at the photo I had secretly taken earlier that afternoon.

The resemblance was shocking.

Not the kind where two people just share a few features.

No.

If those two men stood side by side, anyone would blurt out the same question:

“Are they father and son?”

Daniel rolled over beside me, his sleepy voice blurred with exhaustion.

“Why are you still awake?”

“It’s nothing. I just finished feeding the baby.”

I turned off the screen and lay back down.

My eyes stayed open, fixed on the ceiling until morning.

The next day, I asked Daniel to help me look into something.

“Go to the nanny agency Mom mentioned,” I said. “Check Ms. Parker’s file for me.”

“What are you looking for?”

“Where she’s from.”

At four that afternoon, Daniel texted me back.

Linda Parker. Fifty-two years old. Originally from Hart County, Kentucky.

Hart County.

My father’s hometown.

All through my childhood, he had talked about that place more times than I could count.

“I grew up in Hart County. The whiskey plant was just east of town.”

That was where he started working when he was twenty. He left when he was twenty-five.

Only after that did he move to this city, where relatives introduced him to my mother.

Hart County.

Stopped eating sugar at twenty.

A son who looked exactly like my father in his twenties.

I sat down hard on the closed toilet lid in the bathroom and pressed a towel over my face.

Not to cry.

Because I was afraid I would lose control and march straight into the kitchen to confront the woman standing over my stove.

I could not rush this.

I took seven slow breaths before I stood up again.

In the mirror, my face was white as paper, my lips pressed into a thin line.

I needed proof.

Not guesses.

Not intuition.

Not resemblance.

Proof.

Clear, undeniable proof.