Dear Seraphina,
I was thinking about my letter to you last week and . . . I just want to make sure the woman who says she is your mother really is your mother. Like, have you had a DNA test done?
I’m so happy for you, I really am. The only reason I mention it is I remember seeing something on TV a couple years ago, one of those Dateline NBC stories, about someone your age who had been given up for adoption when she was just a baby. For years and years she had been searching for her birth parents, and finally this guy came forward saying he was her dad. He said that her mom had passed away giving birth and he knew he couldn’t take care of the baby himself, so he gave her up for adoption. He said not one day had gone by where he didn’t regret it and he was now so happy that they were together. A paternity test was done, which confirmed the man was in fact the father, and it seemed like that was it, a happy ending, right?
Wrong.
Turned out the man somehow managed to manipulate the test results. He wasn’t really the father. He was just some psycho. And do you know what ended up happening to the young woman? The man locked her in a room so he could rape and torture her and do all these other awful things, and the only reason the man got caught was because a neighbor happened to hear something. The police were called and they searched the house and they found the young woman. The man was arrested and eventually sent to prison.
Seraphina, I just don’t want the same thing to happen to you. I mean, I don’t think the woman who says she’s your mother would do the same awful things that terrible man did, but you’re a rich young woman, Seraphina, with a very bright future, and it would be terrible if this woman had come forward just so that she could take advantage of you. I’m going to keep praying for you, Seraphina, because I know one of these days you’re going to become such a big star, maybe the biggest in the world, and it would be an awful shame if this woman was playing you so that she could steal all your money.