“Mom.”
“You just came from a funeral.
You’re upset.
This isn’t the time to — “
“Was I adopted?
Yes or no.”
Another pause.
Shorter this time.
“Come home,” she said.
“Come home and we’ll talk.”
I gripped the wheel.
“That’s not a no.”
“It’s not a conversation for the phone.” Her voice had changed.
The warmth was still there but something underneath it had shifted — a door that had always been closed suddenly visible in the wall.
“Please.
Just come home.”
I drove the forty minutes without the radio.
I rehearsed nothing.
Every sentence I tried to build fell apart before it finished.
My mother was waiting in the kitchen when I arrived.
She had made tea.
Two cups, already poured, sitting on the table like a peace offering.
She looked older than she had the last time I visited.
Or maybe I was just seeing her differently.
I sat down.
I did not touch the tea.
“Tell me,” I said.
She wrapped both hands around her cup.
She looked at the table, not at me.
“You were three weeks old,” she said.
“The agency called on a Thursday.
Your father and I had been waiting for almost two years.” She paused.
“We drove six hours to pick you up.
You were so small.
You slept the entire way home.”
I let her talk.
I didn’t interrupt.
“We always planned to tell you.
When you were old enough.
But there was never a right time, and then time just — kept going.” She finally looked up.
“You were ours.
That was all we ever thought about.
You were ours from the moment we saw you.”
“Who was she?” I asked.
My mother’s expression shifted.
Something careful moved across her face.
“The agency didn’t give us much.
A first name.
A general location.
They said she was young, that she was alone, that she had no way to provide for a child.” She set her cup down.
“Her name was Eleanor.”
The kitchen was very quiet.
“You knew,” I said.
“I knew her first name.
That was all.” She reached across the table.
