“Grandma, who was my dad?”
“Who was that lady?”
“Someone who knew your mom.”
His face brightened.
“Really? What did she say?”
“Not much.”
“Did she know my dad?”
“Someone who knew your mom.”
I closed the drawer too quickly.
“I don’t know.”
Lucas watched me.
“You always say that.”
“Because this is something I just don’t know, my love.”
He went quiet.
“You always say that.”
That was Teagan’s move too. I hated seeing it on him.
After he went to bed, I stood at the counter with the envelope in my hands.
Then I opened it.
A photograph slid out.
Teagan stood beside a teenage boy.
I hated seeing it on him.
I knew him: quiet, polite. He’d been at our house twice during Teagan’s pregnancy, but I’d barely spoken to him.
A worn baseball glove was tucked under his arm.
I unfolded the letter.
“Mom,
I know you think I won’t tell you because I don’t trust you.
That isn’t why.
He knows about the baby.”
A worn baseball glove was tucked under his arm.
I stopped reading.
My hands started shaking.
“He wanted to stay. But wanting something and being ready for it aren’t the same thing.
His family keeps telling him this will ruin everything he planned. I told him not to come back because he’s scared of disappointing them. If he comes back, I need it to be because he chooses us himself.”
Then came the line that broke something open in me.
I stopped reading.
“You kept asking me who he was, but you never asked why I was scared.”
I lowered the page.
One memory came back.
Teagan had walked into the kitchen late one night.
“Mom, can I ask you something?”
I hadn’t looked up from my spot at the table.
“Mom, can I ask you something?”
“If this is about avoiding the father question again, I can’t do this tonight, Tee,” I said.
She stood there for a few seconds, then said, “Never mind.”
For ten years, I’d remembered that as Teagan shutting me out.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
I grabbed my phone and called Trudy.
I’d remembered that as Teagan shutting me out.
She answered on the fourth ring.
“You had this for ten years.”
“I know.”
“Don’t say that to me like it’s perfectly fine.”
She went quiet.
“Meet me,” I said.
“You had this for ten years.”
***
Trudy was waiting in a booth near the back of a small diner.
