Diane looked at me.
“That was the secret he wanted to tell you. Not just that Leo connected our families through him. But that your mother’s first child was alive.”
Alive.
The word lit something in my mother’s face so sharply that I had to look away.
For ten years, I had carried the ache of my son not knowing his father.
For decades, my mother had carried the ache of not knowing whether her first child existed anywhere except in memory.
And now, across one table, all our missing pieces sat among envelopes, baby socks, and old paper.
My father lowered himself back into the chair.
“Where is he now?”
Paul hesitated.
“I don’t know. The article is thirteen years old.”
My mother’s fingers curled around the clipping.
“I refused him,” she whispered. “He came looking, and I refused him.”
Diane placed a hand over hers.
