He covered his face.
I looked away.
Privacy even in shared grief.
After a while:
“She thought I was adopted.”
“Yes.”
“She died believing that.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I had researched.
“Pneumonia. She was thirty-one.”
Ethan stared.
I did the arithmetic.
He would have been twelve.
Already in foster care.
His mother had been alive for most of his childhood.
Neither knew how to reach the other.
That kind of tragedy doesn’t need conspiracy beyond ordinary adults making selfish, frightened decisions.
Rachel included no demand that Ethan forgive us.
No instruction to reclaim relatives.
She wrote about his first laugh.
His birthmark.
How he hated socks.
How yellow roses were her favorite because Samuel once told her they were too common for formal arrangements.
That explained Mom’s birthday tears.
Ethan’s twelve-dollar bouquet had unknowingly brought Rachel into the room.
Mom must have recognized the coincidence.
No wonder she’d cried.
After reading, Ethan asked:
