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Same shape.
Darren stared at it for a long time.
Then he sat down.
Carol whispered, “I didn’t come here planning to tell you. I saw Lily’s arm and suddenly I was back there. I panicked.”
“You told us we couldn’t keep our daughter.”
Carol’s face crumpled.
“It sounded like you thought there was something wrong with her.”
“I meant you couldn’t just take her home and ignore that mark. I knew how it sounded the second I said it.”
“It sounded like you thought there was something wrong with her.”
“I know.”
“What were you trying to say?”
“That I recognized it. That there might be medical history you needed. And that telling you why meant admitting everything I’d hidden.”
Darren looked at the photograph again.
“I kept telling myself I was protecting you.”
“You had decades to tell me.”
“I know.”
“No. Don’t keep saying that like it fixes anything.”
“It doesn’t.”
Carol looked down at her hands.
“I kept telling myself I was protecting you,” she said. “Really, I was protecting myself from what you might feel about me.”
There was nothing kind to say that wouldn’t soften what she had just admitted.
Darren said nothing.
Neither did I.
There was nothing kind to say that wouldn’t soften what she had just admitted.
When Lily and I came home two days later, she was still our healthy baby girl.
But now her doctors had a family-history question to investigate that they never would have known to ask before Carol’s confession.
Carol remembered an old town, a former address, and the names of Ruth’s parents.
Darren couldn’t let the rest of it go.
Neither could I.
Carol remembered an old town, a former address, and the names of Ruth’s parents.
We searched through boxes in Carol’s attic until Darren found an old Christmas card with a return address. An older relative recognized her family name and gave us enough information to trace Ruth.