The letter revealed something more painful.
He had been frightened and selfish.
He had made a decision that was not his to make.
And, in trying to spare himself a difficult conversation, he had left me without the information I needed to make my own decisions about my health.
Yet I could not hate him.
I remembered the man who had carried our sick son through a storm.
The man who had held my hand at my mother’s funeral.
The man who had danced with me in our kitchen when we could barely afford dinner.
He had loved me.
He had also failed me.
Both things were true.
Michael sat beside me again.
“Do you forgive him?”
I looked at my son’s face.
“I don’t know yet.”
He nodded.
“That’s fair.”
I folded the letter and placed it back inside the envelope.
“For fourteen years, I thought I had kept the secret because I was ashamed of that ridiculous idea of having another child. Now I understand that I was also afraid of what I might discover if I went back to the clinic.”
