Chapter 6: The Man My Mother Chose
Ryan suggested a diner two towns over.
Neutral ground, he said in his text.
Somewhere neither of us has memories.
I arrived first and took a booth by the window.
I ordered coffee I didn't drink.
I watched the parking lot until his car pulled in — a dark blue sedan, sensible, the kind of car a careful person drives — and I watched him walk across the asphalt toward the door and tried to see it.
Tried to see myself in him.
He was tall.
I am not tall.
His hair was dark, like mine had been.
His hands, when he slid into the booth across from me, were large and square-knuckled, nothing like mine.
But the eyes.
I hadn't noticed at the pool, or I hadn't let myself notice.
His eyes were green.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
The waitress came.
He ordered coffee.
We waited until she left.
"I've been trying to figure out what to say to you for two weeks," he said.
"I had whole speeches.
I threw all of them out."
"Me too."
He wrapped both hands around his mug.
"Can I ask you about Vermont?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember anything about — about the birth?
About that time?"
I had been preparing for this question.
I had spent two weeks excavating a memory I had spent forty years burying.
"I remember being frightened," I said.
"I remember the room being very white.
I remember a nurse who was kind to me — she held my hand and she wasn't supposed to, I think, but she did anyway." I paused.
"I remember hearing you cry."
Ryan went very still.
"I remember thinking — just for a moment — that you sounded strong.
That you sounded like someone who was going to be all right." I looked at my coffee.
"And then they took you and my mother came in and she told me there had been complications.
That you hadn't made it.
And I—" I stopped.
"I believed her.
I had no reason not to."
"She lied to your face," he said.
Not with anger.
Just with the flatness of someone confirming a fact they've already processed.
"Yes."
"While you were still in the bed."
"Yes."
He was quiet for a moment.
"My adoptive mother — her name was Carol — she told me I was adopted when I was seven.
She said my birth mother was a good person who couldn't keep me because of her circumstances.
She made sure I never felt unwanted." He looked up.
"Carol died four years ago.
I wish she could have known how this ended."
"She sounds like she was a good woman."
"She was." A pause.
"I tried to find you once.
About fifteen years ago.
I hired someone.
They hit a wall — all the records from St.
Catherine's from that period were sealed, and the agency my mother — Carol — used had closed." He looked at me steadily.
"I stopped looking after a while.
I told myself it didn't matter.
That I had a life and it was enough."
"But it wasn't."
"No," he said.
"It wasn't."
We sat with that for a moment.
"I owe you an apology," I said.
He frowned.
"You don't owe me—"
"Not for giving you up.
I didn't give you up.
That was taken from both of us." I held his gaze.
"I owe you an apology for every year you spent wondering.
For every question you had that went unanswered.
I know it wasn't my fault.
I know I didn't choose it.
But you are my son and you spent fifty-nine years without me and I am sorry for every one of those years."
Ryan looked at the window.
His jaw worked.
He didn't speak for long enough that I began to worry I had said the wrong thing.
Then he reached across the table and put his hand over mine — the same gesture Daniel had made at my kitchen table two weeks ago — and I understood, in a way I hadn't been prepared for, that whatever else had been taken from us, something in the bone recognized something in the bone.
"I need to tell you something," he said.
"About Jessica."
I waited.
"She's asked me to move out.
While she figures things out." He kept his hand on mine.
"I understand why.
I don't blame her.
But I need you to know that whatever happens with Jessica — whatever the legal situation becomes, whatever our family has to restructure itself into — I am not disappearing.
I spent fifteen years looking for you and then I gave up and then I walked into a backyard pool party and there you were." He almost smiled.
It didn't quite make it.
"I'm not walking away from that."
"Neither am I," I said.
He nodded.
Took his hand back.
Picked up his coffee.
"I'd like to meet Daniel," he said.
"When you think the time is right."
"Daniel already knows.
He's been asking about you every day."
That almost-smile came back.
This time it made it.
And then his phone buzzed on the table between us.
He glanced down at it and the smile disappeared.
He turned the phone so I could see the screen.
It was a text from a number labeled *MOM* — his adoptive mother's number, which meant someone else was using it.
The text said: *I know what you've found out.
We need to talk before you go any further.
There are things about that adoption you don't know.
Things that will change how you see all of this.*
*Don't trust everything the old woman tells you.*
May you like
Ryan looked up at me.
"Carol has been de@d for four years," he said.
