He looked at Eleanor.
“Was I Rebecca’s baby?”
Eleanor’s mouth opened, but nothing came out.
That silence answered him before she did.
David stood and walked toward the window.
I wanted to go to him, but Chloe was beginning to fuss, and something told me he needed the few feet of space between us.
Margaret continued carefully.
Rebecca had struggled after giving birth.
She had no money, no stable partner, and she was terrified of raising a child alone.
Eleanor and her husband had been married for several years and had been trying unsuccessfully to have a baby.
The arrangement had started as temporary.
Eleanor would care for the newborn while Rebecca recovered and decided what to do.
Weeks became months.
According to Margaret, Rebecca eventually agreed that Eleanor and her husband could raise the boy.
But there had been one condition.
David would be told the truth when he was old enough.
“She made you promise,” Margaret said.
Eleanor finally exploded.
“I raised him!”
David turned from the window.
“That wasn’t the question.”
“I fed you.
I stayed awake when you were sick.
I took you to school.
I was your mother in every way that mattered.”
“Then why lie?”
Eleanor’s anger faltered.
“Because you were mine.”
The possessiveness in those words made my skin crawl.
Margaret shook her head.
“Rebecca didn’t want him taken from you.
She wanted him to know her someday.”
“She was unstable.”
“She was grieving.”
“She left.”
“Because you told her it would confuse him if she kept coming around.”
David stared between them.
Pieces of his childhood were rearranging themselves in real time.
He asked where Rebecca had gone.
Margaret said she moved away when David was four.
She sent birthday cards for years.
Eleanor returned some and hid others.
Susan began crying quietly.
“I thought you eventually told him,” she said to Eleanor.
“You said you would.”
David’s voice cracked.
“All of you knew?”
Margaret flinched.
“Not everything.
We knew Rebecca was your biological mother.
We believed Eleanor would tell you when you were older.
Then Rebecca died, and Eleanor said telling you would only hurt you.”
David sat again, but this time he moved to the far end of the sofa, away from Eleanor.
“How old was I when she died?”
“Fourteen.”
He stared at the floor.
