Skip to content My mother stopped talking and began tapping her fingernail against the chair.
At five, Owen stirred and fussed before settling again.
The afternoon light outside the hospital window slowly turned golden.
At 5:43, I heard the elevator down the hallway.
Then footsteps.
Then something else.
The soft squeak of wheels.
A wheelchair.
The door opened.
James stood there.
His eyes were swollen and red.
He looked as though he had been crying for hours.
One hand rested on the handle of a wheelchair.
Sitting in it was a woman I had never seen before.
She looked to be in her sixties.
A gray knitted cap covered her head.
Her hands trembled in her lap.
And she was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t understand.
Mom immediately stood.
James looked at me.
“Olivia. I’m sorry. I know how this looks.”
I raised one hand before my mother could speak.
“Who is she?”
James brought the wheelchair closer.
Then he knelt beside my bed.
“This is Marion.”
I stared at the woman.
James swallowed.
“Before you decide anything about the birth certificate, please let me explain everything.”
Marion lifted her eyes.
They were the same color as James’s.
I looked at Owen.
Then at the blank birth certificate.
“Talk.”
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