My son.
All the questions he’d asked growing up.
“Where’s my dad?”
“Did he ever want to meet me?”
“Is he a bad person?”
And me… standing there, trying to protect him from a truth I didn’t even fully understand.
“He’s almost a man now,” I said quietly. “You think I can just walk in and drop this on him? ‘Hey, your father didn’t abandon you—his mother lied and kept you apart for seventeen years, and by the way, he’s dying.’ You think that won’t break him?”
Her face crumpled. “I know it will hurt. But not knowing… that’s a different kind of pain. I’ve seen it in my son’s eyes for years. He never stopped wondering why you left.”
I closed my eyes.
Seventeen years.
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