Chapter 6: What Patricia Was Hiding
She sat down.
Not gracefully, not deliberately — she simply ran out of the ability to stand and the nearest chair caught her.
She set her handbag on her lap and held it with both hands like it was the only solid thing in the room.
Lily and I waited.
"I was twenty-four," Patricia said finally.
"Your husband was twenty-six.
We had known each other for two years." She was looking at the floor.
"It wasn't a long affair.
Three months.
Maybe four.
And then he met you, and it ended, and I told myself it was finished."
"But you were pregnant," I said.
"I didn't know yet.
Not when it ended.
By the time I knew, he was already with you.
You were already — it was already serious." She pressed her lips together.
"I made a decision.
I met someone else.
I married him.
I let him believe Lily was his."
"And my husband?" I said.
"Did he know?"
Patricia was quiet for a long moment.
"I told him," she said.
"When Lily was two years old.
I told him because she was sick.
Because the doctors needed family medical history and I didn't have enough to give them." She looked up.
"He wanted to help.
He wanted to tell you, to bring Lily into the family properly.
I said no.
I told him my husband would leave me.
I told him it would destroy everything."
"So he agreed to stay silent."
"He agreed to stay silent." Her voice was flat.
"But he didn't do nothing.
He set up a small account.
Money, every year, for Lily's medical costs.
Anonymously, through a lawyer.
I accepted it because I had no choice — the bills were too much." She looked at Lily.
"I never told you because I didn't want you to ask questions I couldn't answer."
Lily hadn't moved.
"He d*ed when I was six," she said.
"The money stopped."
"Yes."
"And you never reached out to his family.
To her." Lily's voice was very steady.
"Even when I got worse.
Even when I went on the transplant list."
"I didn't think it was my place."
"I almost d*ed, Mom." The word *Mom* came out like something being set down carefully on a hard surface.
"Twice.
In the last two years, I almost d*ed twice.
And somewhere forty minutes away there was a boy who was my brother — or half-brother — who was also dying.
And you knew.
You knew, and you said nothing."
"I didn't know about him," Patricia said, and her voice cracked for the first time.
"I didn't know he was sick.
I didn't know any of that until after the surgery, when I read the letter."
"But you knew I existed," I said.
She looked at me.
"Yes."
"You knew my son existed."
"Yes."
"And when he d*ed and your daughter received his heart, you came to this funeral and you handed me a letter and you sat beside me and watched me read it, and you said nothing."
"I was going to—"
"You were managing it," I said.
"You were deciding how much I was allowed to know.
Just like you've been doing for eighteen years."
Patricia flinched.
It was small, but it was real.
"I want a DNA test," Lily said.
She was looking at her mother, not at me.
"I want to know.
I have a right to know."
"Lily—"
"I have a right to know if the boy whose heart is beating in my chest right now was my brother." Her voice didn't waver.
"I have a right to know if this woman lost her son and her husband's child in the same moment.
I have a right to know who I am."
Patricia looked at me.
I thought she was going to argue.
I thought she was going to reach for the careful management again, the smoothed skirt and the measured words.
Instead she said, very quietly: "I have something at home.
Something he left with me when he set up the account.
In case anything ever happened to him.
He said I should give it to his wife if — if things ever changed."
"What is it?" I asked.
"A letter," she said.
"From your husband.
Written to you." She closed her eyes briefly.
"I've had it for thirteen years."
The room was very still.
Lily reached over and took my hand.
I hadn't expected it.
Her fingers were warm.
"She'll take it now," Lily said to her mother.
"Today.
Before we leave."
Patricia nodded.
May you like
She didn't argue.
She just looked at me with the expression of someone who had been carrying something very heavy for a very long time, and had finally, with great relief and great shame, set it down.
