My appendix ruptured at 2 a.m., and I called my parents seventeen times before the world began to blur. My mother finally texted back: “Your sister’s baby shower is tomorrow. We can’t leave now.”

As if I were both twenty-seven and newborn.

Gerald rushed on.

“It doesn’t erase anything. It doesn’t have to change your name. It’s mostly symbolic at your age, though there are legal effects too. I just thought—well, I don’t want to presume, but DNA told us what was taken, and I wondered if maybe the law could record what we chose.”

My vision blurred.

He looked terrified.

“If it’s too much, forget I said anything. I don’t need paperwork to know—”

“Yes,” I said.

He stopped.

“What?”

“Yes.”

The folder trembled in my hands.

“Yes, Gerald.”

His eyes filled.

“Are you sure?”

I smiled through tears.

“You asked me that when I gave you my key.”

“It remains a useful question.”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

He breathed out like he had been holding air for twenty-seven years.

Then I said, “But I want one more thing.”

“Anything.”

“I want to change my last name.”

His face went still.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know.”

“Crawford is the name you’ve had your whole life.”

“It was never mine. It was a house I was locked in.”

His mouth trembled.

“What name do you want?”

I looked at the basil. At the sky. At the man who had found me in a hospital and stayed.

“Holly Maize,” I said.

The name felt strange.

Then warm.

Then right.