Chapter 3
The color completely left Diane’s face.
She looked like she might pass out.
“Robert,” she said. “Don’t.”
“Tell him,” Robert repeated. “Or I will.”
Ethan looked back and forth between them.
“What baby?” he asked. “I was born in November. Nine months after the wedding. That’s what you always told me.”
Robert shook his head.
“You were born in November, yes. But you weren’t the first.”
The room went dead silent.
I grabbed Ethan’s hand.
He was shaking.
“First what?” Ethan said.
“First child,” Robert said.
Diane stood up so fast her chair scraped the floor.
“Stop it!” she screamed. “You promised me! You swore you’d take this to your grave!”
“You broke the deal when you hit my daughter-in-law,” Robert said calmly. “Thirty-one years of silence. That was the deal. You get to be the perfect wife, the perfect mother, the perfect Christian woman at church. And I keep my mouth shut about what really happened before we got married.”
He leaned forward.
“But you don’t get to be cruel to people who’ve done nothing to you. Not anymore.”
Ethan was white.
“Dad,” he said. “What happened?”
Robert looked at his son.
“The baby your mother was carrying in those papers? It wasn’t you.”
The words hung in the air.
“Then who was it?” Ethan whispered.
“A girl,” Robert said. “Your sister.”
Diane let out a sound like a wounded animal.
She covered her face and started sobbing.
“She was born two weeks after that hospital visit,” Robert said. “Premature. Tiny thing. Barely four pounds. But she was healthy. Perfect.”
He paused.
“And then your mother’s parents made her give her up.”
Ethan staggered back a step.
He bumped into the table.
A glass toppled over and shattered.
No one moved to clean it up.
“They made me,” Diane sobbed. “They said I was too young. They said an illegitimate child would ruin the family name. They said no decent man would ever marry me if I showed up to the wedding with a newborn.”
“So you gave her away?” Ethan said. His voice was hollow.
“I had no choice!” Diane cried. “My father packed my bags while I was still in the hospital. They drove me to some agency in Memphis. Signed the papers before I even held her. I never even got to name her.”
Robert shook his head.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said.
Diane’s head snapped up.
“What do you mean?”
“I was there,” Robert said.
The room went silent again.
Diane stared at him like she’d never seen him before.
“You were there?” she whispered.
“I followed you,” he said. “Your father wouldn’t let me see you. Said I’d ruined his daughter’s life. Said if I cared about you at all, I’d stay away and let you fix the mess I’d helped make.”
He looked down at the papers in his hand.
“So I followed the car. I was outside that agency building for three hours. When you came out with your parents, you couldn’t even stand up straight. And then a nurse brought out a tiny baby in a pink blanket. She handed her to a couple through a side door.”
Robert’s voice cracked.
“I saw her, Diane. I saw our daughter.”
Ethan was crying now.
Silent tears running down his face.
“And you never told me?” he said to his father.
“I couldn’t,” Robert said. “I promised your mother. And honestly? I didn’t know how to tell you that you had a sister out there somewhere. That she’d been given away because your grandparents were ashamed. That the same woman who raised you to value family above everything else had given up her firstborn because of what people might think.”
He looked at me.
“And then Emily got pregnant. And Diane lost her mind. Because every time she looked at that baby growing inside her, she saw her own daughter. The one she lost. The one she couldn’t protect.”
Diane stopped sobbing.
She looked at me.
Really looked at me.
For the first time since I’d met her, there was no anger in her eyes.
Just pain.
Raw, unfiltered agony.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
I didn’t know what to say.
The woman who’d slapped me ten minutes ago was suddenly the most broken person in the room.
“I’m so sorry, Emily,” she repeated. “I never should have touched you. I never should have said those things. You didn’t deserve any of it.”
She stood up and took a step toward me.
Ethan immediately tensed.
But she stopped.
She didn’t reach for me.
She just looked at my stomach.
“That baby,” she said, her voice trembling. “That baby is a gift. I know that. I’ve always known that. I just… I couldn’t see it. Every time I looked at you, I saw myself at nineteen. Scared. Pregnant. About to lose everything.”
May you like
She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“I hated you for getting to keep yours when I had to give mine away.”
