Chapter 3: What the Letter Said
I stepped back from the door without meaning to.
Lauren caught my arm.
"Can we come inside?" she asked.
"Please.
This isn't something I can say on a doorstep."
I nodded.
I don't remember deciding to.
My body just moved.
We sat in the living room — the same room where Ethan had eaten Christmas dinner eleven months ago, where his jacket still hung on the hook by the stairs because I hadn't been able to move it.
Rosie sat on the edge of the sofa and placed her stuffed rabbit carefully in her lap.
She didn't fidget.
She didn't look around the room the way children usually do.
She looked at me.
I looked back at her.
Those eyes.
That particular shade of grey-green.
The slight downward tilt at the outer corners.
I had spent thirty years looking into eyes exactly like those.
"Tell me," I said.
My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"From the beginning."
Lauren pressed her hands together in her lap.
"Ethan and I were close in college," she said.
"Closer than I ever told anyone.
We were together for almost two years.
It ended badly — my fault, not his.
I was young and stupid and I walked away from the best person I had ever met."
"He never mentioned you," I said.
"I know.
He wouldn't have." She paused.
"A few years later I got married.
It didn't last.
By the time Rosie was born, I was on my own."
I looked at Rosie again.
She was watching her mother with calm, serious eyes.
"When did he find out?" I asked.
Lauren's jaw tightened.
"He didn't.
Not for a long time.
I never told him.
I was ashamed.
I had left him, and then I had kept his daughter from him, and I didn't know how to undo that." Her voice cracked on the last word.
"When Rosie got sick, I was desperate.
I contacted every relative I could find.
None of them were a match.
And then I thought — I have to tell him.
Not to ask for a kidney.
Just to tell him the truth.
He deserved that much."
"But he gave her a kidney anyway," I said.
"The moment I told him about Rosie — who she was, what she meant — he didn't hesitate.
He said, 'Get me tested.' Just like that.
No anger.
No accusation.
He sat across from me and said, 'Get me tested.'"
The room was very quiet.
Rosie reached over and placed her small hand on top of mine.
I looked down at it.
Her fingers were thin.
There was a faint scar on the inside of her wrist from the IV lines.
"He knew," I said.
"He knew she was his and he still—"
"He gave her everything he had," Lauren said.
"And he made me promise not to tell you until after.
He said he didn't want you to spend the surgery worrying about anything except him coming home."
I unfolded the letter in my hands.
I had been holding it this whole time without realizing.
The first line read: *Mom, by the time you read this, you'll know I have a daughter.*
May you like
My throat closed.
"Keep reading," Lauren said softly.
