want to keep her?”
Susan covered her mouth.
For a moment, she couldn’t answer.
“More than anything.”
She told me about the years that followed.
About waking in the middle of the night wondering whether her daughter was warm enough.
About secretly buying birthday cards she had nowhere to send.
About the small silver bracelet she’d worn beneath her sleeve for decades.
It had belonged to Emily during those twenty minutes in the hospital.
Susan had never told her husband.
When they divorced, she’d convinced herself that the secret should
remain buried.
Then, six years earlier, she’d received a letter from the adoption agency.
Emily was searching for her biological mother.
Susan had been terrified.
She’d kept the letter in a drawer for almost a year.
Then Robert found it.
I looked up sharply.
“How?”
Susan swallowed.
“He came over to repair my kitchen cabinet. I had the letter on
the counter. When I saw him reading the envelope, I panicked.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Everything.”
“And he didn’t tell me.”
“No.”
I looked toward the window.
Susan continued.
“
He told me I should speak to you. I said I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because you and Robert had tried for years to have children.”
The words struck me unexpectedly.
Susan’s eyes filled.
“I watched you go through appointments, disappointments, and all those months of hoping. I was there when you finally told everyone you couldn’t bear another treatment.”
I remembered.
Robert and I had wanted children desperately.
After years of trying, we’d accepted that parenthood might not happen for us.
It had been one of the deepest sorrows of our
marriage.
Susan wiped her face.
“How could I tell you I’d given away a daughter when you wanted a child so badly?”
I stared at her.
“You thought I’d hate
you?”
“I thought you’d think I hadn’t appreciated what you would have given anything to have.”
My voice cracked.
“Susan, you were seventeen.”
She began crying.
“I know that now.”
I shook my head.
“You should have told me.”
“I know.”
“You should have let me be there for you.”
“I know.”
And suddenly we were both crying.
At eleven,
there was a knock at the hotel room door.
Susan froze.
I stood.
“Do you want me to answer it?”
She nodded.
I opened the door.
A woman stood in the hallway holding a small bouquet of white daisies.
She had dark brown hair, kind eyes, and a nervous smile.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Emily.”
Behind me, Susan made a small sound.
Emily looked past my shoulder.
Their eyes met.
Neither moved.
Then Emily whispered, “Mom?”
Susan covered her mouth.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Emily crossed the room.
They embraced.
It wasn’t
