“No, I mean… okay, it’s complicated, Leo.”
My son frowned. “You knew about her?”
“But I found his sister.”
“I knew he had a sister,” I said. “But I never met her. Sometimes I wondered if she really existed. She was older and already away at college, I think. Andrew said his parents acted like she didn’t exist half the time.”
“Why?”
I gave a helpless laugh. “Because she dyed her hair black, dated some guy in a garage band, and apparently that was enough to scandalize the family for life.”
That almost got a smile out of him.
“She was the black sheep,” I said. “At least, that’s how Andrew made it sound. He never talked about her much. His mother liked things neat and tidy. Gwen didn’t sound neat.”
I gave a helpless laugh.
Leo pushed his phone toward me. “I messaged her.”
I closed my eyes for half a second, then held out my hand. “Okay, show me.”
He unlocked the screen. “I kept it simple.”
His first message was careful, polite, and almost too adult:
“Hi. My name is Leo. I think your brother, Andrew, may have been my father. My mom’s name is Heather, and she had me eighteen years ago.”
“I messaged her.”
Then Gwen’s reply:
“Oh my God. If your mother is Heather… I need to tell you something. Andrew didn’t leave her.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Mom?” Leo said quietly.
I kept reading.
Gwen wrote that Andrew came home shaken after I told him about the baby, holding onto my pregnancy test. He hadn’t even made it through
dinner
before Matilda, their mother, realized something was wrong and pushed it out of him.
And just like that, I was back there.
“Andrew didn’t leave her.”
Cold bleachers, my hands shaking, and Andrew staring at me like he knew something was wrong.
“What is it?” he’d asked. “Heather, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m pregnant.”
He went white. Then he took both my hands. “Okay. Okay, babe.”
I remember staring at him. “Okay?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he said. His voice was shaking, but he didn’t let go of me. “Okay?”
“Heather, you’re scaring me.”
***
Back in my kitchen, Leo whispered, “So he knew.”
“Yes, I told him, honey. I promise you.”
I kept reading.
Matilda had exploded. Their father already had a transfer lined up out of state, and she decided they were leaving early. Andrew begged to come see me first. He begged to stay long enough to explain. She refused.
Then Gwen wrote the part that made my vision blur.
Andrew wrote letters, but his mother intercepted them.
Matilda had exploded.
I didn’t get one.
I pushed back so hard my chair scraped.
“No.”
Leo stood up. “Mom…”
“No.” I grabbed the edge of the counter. “No, there’s no way.”
“There’s more,” he said gently.
I looked at him.
He swallowed. “She says some letters were hidden. Some were thrown out, and some…” He glanced at the phone. “Some were kept in an attic box.”
“No, there’s no way.”
A box: real proof. I needed to see it.
I stared at him, then at the screen. “I spent eighteen years thinking he ran.”
Just then, my mother came through the back door carrying dinner rolls.
“I brought the good ones,” she called. Then she stopped. “Heather? What happened?”
I turned to her, still holding Leo’s phone.
“He wrote.”
She frowned. “Who?”
“Andrew.”
My father appeared behind her. “What’s going on?”
“Heather? What happened?”
I handed Mom the phone. She read the message thread while Dad read over her shoulder.
Mom’s face changed first. “Ted,” she whispered. “He wrote to her.”
