A faint smile touched his mouth and vanished.
“But she loves your mother.
She wanted to know Margaret would be safe.”
I thought of Brenda’s tearful warning: You are not going to like who it is.
She had been right about my reaction, not about Louis.
“Why did they hide this from me?”
Louis looked at the floor.
“Your mother wanted to tell you herself.
Every day she planned to do it.
Every day she became afraid you would think less of her—or think I had come for money.”
“Did you?”
The question came out sharper than I intended.
Louis met my eyes.
“She offered to pay me.
I refused.
She offered to change her will.
I refused that too.
I have a home.
I have work waiting for me.
I came because I spent my whole life wondering whether she remembered me.”
He pointed to the letters in my hands.
“Now I know she did.”
The hospital doors opened again.
A nurse approached us quickly, and my heart lurched.
“Your mother is awake,” she said.
“She is asking for both of you.”
Both of us.
Louis stood, but he did not move toward the elevator.
He waited for me.
For one ugly second, I wanted to tell him he had no right to enter.
I wanted to take the envelope, walk into Mom’s room alone and force the world back into the shape it had held that morning.
Then I looked at the photograph again.
Mom’s young face was swollen from crying, but she was smiling down at the baby in her arms.
Louis had already been erased once.
I could not do it to him again.
We rode the elevator in silence.
Inside Mom’s room, the machines glowed softly beside her bed.
She looked smaller than she had the night before.
Her skin was pale, and an oxygen tube rested beneath her nose.
Her eyes moved to the envelope in my hands.
Then they closed.
“You told her,” she said.
“I had to,” Louis answered.
“I’m sorry.”
Mom opened her eyes and looked at me.
“Do not blame him.”
I pulled a chair to the bed.
“Is he your son?”
Her mouth trembled.
“Yes.”
One word demolished every excuse I had built in the hallway.
“Why did you never tell me?”
Mom stared at the ceiling for a long moment.
“Because the longer I waited, the uglier the truth became.
At first I was ashamed that I had been pregnant.
Then I was ashamed that I had surrendered him.
