“I kept the promise,” I said quietly to the glass. “She never felt like half of anything.”
Eighteen years had gone by since I lost her and held our daughter for the very first time, both within the same hour.
Hailey came downstairs wearing her cap and gown, clutching a folded paper that she quickly slipped into her sleeve when she noticed me looking.
“You ready, kiddo?” I asked.
“Almost.”
She had been unusually quiet all week, pushing food around her plate, speaking in low tones on the phone, and looking at me with damp, guilty eyes.
I had also noticed the attic ladder pulled down twice, and her mother’s old boxes moved out of the careful arrangement I had maintained for years.
The Sunday before, she had suddenly asked whether my mother had ever mentioned giving up a baby before I was born.
