Chapter 2 - He Never Knew Either
Inside the box sat a single envelope, my name across the front in Walter's slanted hand.
My hands wouldn't hold still. I sat down at the kitchen table and looked at that envelope for a long while before I could make myself lift the flap.
A letter. And two photographs.
The first one knocked the air out of me. It was me — eighteen, squinting on the front steps of my mother's house, wearing a sweater I hadn't thought about in half a century. I had never given Walter that picture. I don't know how he got it.
The second was a boy. Seven, maybe eight. Dark hair, a gap where a tooth should have been, and a grin I knew from somewhere I couldn't name.
On the back, four words in pencil.
He never knew either.
The photo slipped out of my fingers.
Nancy came in from the driveway and stopped dead when she saw my face.
"Mom? What happened?"
I couldn't get a word out. She picked up the letter and started reading. Somewhere in the middle, her face drained.
"Mom," she whispered. "Were you pregnant when Walter left?"
The kitchen seemed to slide sideways. "What?"
She held the pages up. Her hands were shaking as badly as mine.
May you like
"He knew. He says right here that he knew. And that he made a decision he spent his whole life sorry for."
I couldn't answer. Because in fifty-five years, no one had ever told me. Not once.
