Homecoming

Sam had lost all sense of time as she sat against the wall, knees to her chest. Before her was Kathy's bed and on it her foster mother lying motionless. On the opposite wall, written in Kathy's blood was the name LEXI.

What engulfed Sam now was an all pervasive-numbness. An absence of thought or emotion.

You're in shock.

At some point, Sam's phone had begun to ring. She simply sat in that same position, oblivious to anything but that body and that name.

Cutting through the cold detachment was a sense that the name Lexi was, in fact, Sam's real name. Nothing more, at least not yet, but the certainty existed that the name Lexi belonged to her. Somehow, Sam knew this with the same conviction that she knew that the sky was blue and the earth was round. It was simply truth.