I rubbed the corner of the dish towel between my fingers. “Did you find him?”
His voice lowered. “No, Mom.”
I nodded once, pretending that didn’t punch straight through my ribs.
“But I found his sister.”
I looked up sharply. “His what?”
“His sister. Her name’s Gwen.”
I let out a short disbelieving laugh. “Andrew didn’t have a sister, honey.”
“Mom.”
“No, I mean… okay, it’s complicated.”
Leo frowned. “You knew about her?”
“I knew he had a sister,” I explained. “But I never met her. Sometimes I wondered whether she was even real. She was older and already away at college, I think. Andrew said his parents acted like she barely existed.”
“Why?”
I laughed helplessly. “Because she dyed her hair black, dated some guy in a garage band, and apparently that was enough to scandalize the entire family forever.”
That nearly got a smile out of him.
“She was the black sheep,” I said. “At least that’s how Andrew described it. He never talked about her much. His mother liked everything neat and polished. Gwen didn’t sound neat.”
Leo slid his phone across the table toward me. “I messaged her.”
I closed my eyes briefly before holding out my hand. “Okay. Let me see.”
He unlocked the screen. “I kept it simple.”
The first message was careful and almost painfully mature:
“Hi. My name is Leo. I think your brother, Andrew, may have been my father. My mom’s name is Heather, and she had me eighteen years ago.”
Then Gwen’s reply:
“Oh my God. If your mother is Heather… I need to tell you something. Andrew didn’t leave her.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“Mom?” Leo asked quietly.
I kept reading.
Gwen explained that Andrew came home shaken after I told him about the baby, clutching my pregnancy test in his hand. He didn’t even make it through dinner before Matilda—his mother—forced the truth out of him.
And suddenly I was there again.
Cold bleachers. Shaking hands. Andrew staring at me like he already knew something was wrong.
“What is it?” he asked. “Heather, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m pregnant.”
He went completely pale. Then he grabbed both my hands.
“Okay. Okay, babe.”
I remember staring at him. “Okay?”
“We’ll figure it out,” he promised. His voice trembled, but he never let go of me. “Okay?”
Back in my kitchen, Leo whispered, “So he knew.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “I told him, honey. I swear I did.”
I kept reading.
Matilda exploded. Their father already had a transfer arranged out of state, and she decided they’d leave early. Andrew begged to see me one more time. Begged to stay long enough to explain. She refused.
Then Gwen wrote the sentence that made my vision blur.
Andrew wrote letters, but his mother intercepted them.
I never received a single one.
I shoved my chair back so hard it scraped across the floor.
“No.”
Leo stood immediately. “Mom…”
“No.” I grabbed the counter edge. “No, that’s impossible.”
“There’s more,” he said gently.
I looked at him.
He swallowed. “She says some letters were hidden. Some got thrown away. And some…” He glanced at the screen. “Some were kept in an attic box.”
A box. Real proof. I needed to see it.
I stared at him, then back at the phone. “I spent eighteen years believing he abandoned us.”
Just then my mother walked through the back door carrying dinner rolls.
“I brought the good ones,” she called out. Then she stopped cold. “Heather? What happened?”
