“Emily,” Dr.
Michael Wright said, his voice breaking, “there’s something Ethan never told you.”
My son was still pressed against my chest, his tiny body warm beneath the hospital blanket.
I stared at the doctor.
The nurses stared at him too.
Nobody moved.
“What are you talking about?”
Dr.
Wright looked down at the name he had circled on my chart.
Ethan Brooks.
Then he reached into his coat again and unlocked his phone.
“Before I say anything,” he said, “I need you to look at something.”
Every instinct in me tightened.
I had spent seven months learning what happened when you trusted someone too quickly.
“No,” I said.
“First you tell me why you cried when you saw my baby.”
He nodded slowly, as if I had every right to demand the answer.
“Because I’ve seen that face before.”
My heart thudded.
“Where?”
Dr.
Wright turned the phone toward me.
On the screen was an old photograph.
The image had faded with age.
A much younger Michael Wright sat in a chair holding a newborn boy wrapped in a pale blanket.
I barely looked at the younger doctor.
I looked at the baby.
The shape of the eyes.
The small crease above the nose.
The curve of the mouth.
Even with decades separating the photograph from the child in my arms, the resemblance was unsettling.
I looked down at my son.
Then back at the photograph.
“Who is that?”
Dr.
Wright’s jaw tightened.
“My son.”
Something cold moved through me.
He swiped to another photograph.
The boy was older in this one, perhaps six or seven, standing beside a bicycle with dark hair falling over his forehead.
Another swipe.
A teenager.
Another.
A young man standing stiffly beside Dr.
Wright at what looked like a graduation.
I knew that face.
“Ethan.”
The name came out as barely more than breath.
Dr.
Wright lowered the phone.
“Yes.”
For several seconds, I honestly thought exhaustion had made me misunderstand him.
“Ethan Brooks is your son?”
“Yes.”
“That’s impossible.”
“His mother kept the surname Brooks after our marriage ended.
