That arrangements had already been made.
That I needed to survive for Christopher.
I had been sedated heavily.
Days blurred together.
I went home without my baby.
PART 5 — THE SCAR
The surgery left the curved scar across my abdomen.
Doctors later explained that complications required an unusual emergency
incision.
For years, that scar represented one thing.
The night my son died.
Now my son-in-law had one almost exactly like it.
But that alone proved nothing.
Scars can resemble one another.
Then there was the birthday.
The age.
The birthmark.
I looked at Helen.
“What do you know?”
She began crying.
“I don’t know enough.”
“You knew something.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
She sat down.
And then my sister told me she had carried a secret for forty-one years.
PART 6 — WHAT HELEN SAW
The night I gave birth, Helen had been twenty-nine.
She arrived at the hospital after our mother called.
I was already in surgery.
