When I finally found my adopted daughter after three days of searching, I thought I’d be met with anger, guilt, or even relief. But instead, I saw pure terror. There she was—pregnant, curled up in a beaten-up car at the edge of an abandoned parking lot, begging me to leave.
I found Clara in the back corner of an abandoned parking lot near the airport—nineteen years old, pregnant, and curled beneath a pile of worn-out coats inside a rusted sedan. The windows were fogged from her breath, the kind of fog that tells you someone has been living in fear, not comfort. When she looked…