My 81-year-old mother hired a biker covered in tattoos as a caregiver – When I found out why, my knees dropped

“Brenda, please. Just tell me what you know. »

There was a long silence at the end of the line.

“I don’t know who he is, Margaret. That’s what hurts me. She didn’t want to tell me. For twelve years, I sat at that woman’s table, and she wouldn’t tell me. She just said she chose him and that I had to take care of my business. So I left. »

“That’s not an answer. »

“That’s the only one I have. »

She hung up.

I did something I’m not proud of. That night, while Louis was sleeping in the guest room, I searched his jacket, which was hanging on the back of a chair. I found the notebook, and below it, a picture.

She was old, damaged in the corners. A young woman in a hospital gown held a newborn baby in her arms, her face turned away from the camera.

There was something in his shoulders that seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I put everything back exactly as I had found it.

Three days later, Mom had her seizure.

The ambulance arrived at four in the morning. Louis carried her himself through the hallway to the paramedics who were waiting outside; this huge and tattooed man was rocking my mother as if she were made of paper, her face bathed in tears that I could not reconcile with everything I had said to myself about her.

In the hospital, the doctor was categorical.

“This is the disease, Margaret. It's progressing. It has nothing to do with what someone did or didn’t do. »

I heard those words. I did not believe it.

Louis never left his bedside. He held his hand despite the infusions. He whispered words to her when the monitors were beeping. He pushed his hair back as if he had done it all his life.

It gave me goosebumps, the way he behaved like he was his son.

When Mom finally fell asleep, I got up.

“Louis. Outside. Outside. »

He followed me down the hallway without saying a word.

“I want you to resign,” I said. “I’ll pay you three times more than her. Tonight. You leave and you don't come back. »

He looked at me for a long time. Then he turned around and headed to the elevator.

“Louis,” I called him after him. “Replie me. »

It only stopped once we had passed through the sliding doors and were in the freezing parking lot, under the buzz of the neon lights above our heads.

He slowly turned around, took the leather notebook out of the pocket of his vest and handed it to me.

“She asked me to remain silent,” he said. “I can’t do it anymore. »

I had a tight heart.

“What did she hide? »

He took an inspiration that seemed to come from the depths of himself.

“Sixty years ago, before you were born, your mother had a baby. A boy. She was nineteen and unmarried, and her family did not want her to keep it. »

The parking lot started to waver under my feet.

“She gave it to adoption,” Louis said in a low voice. “It has registered in an adoption register years later, in case. A year ago, this boy found her. »

I knew that before he even said it. The picture. The shoulders. The way Mom looked at him.

“It’s you,” I murmured.

“Me. His huge hands hanged along his body. “She didn’t want to die without knowing me, Margaret. And she didn't want to lose you trying. »

I stood under the buzzing lights, and all the walls I had erected collapsed at once.

Later, I opened the notebook and discovered entire pages of questions that Louis had put aside to ask her: what songs she sang when she was little, if she loved the sea, what color were her mother’s eyes, what he looked like when he was a baby, during the few minutes she had held him in her arms.