Then I noticed the second envelope.
It was thicker than the first.
On the front, Eleanor had written:
For Daniel. Open only after you understand the truth about your birth.
My fingers trembled as I opened it.
Inside was another letter.
My dear son,
There is one more person you must understand before you can understand me.
Your father did not disappear because he stopped loving me.
He disappeared because someone he trusted told him that I had betrayed him.
And when he finally learned the truth, he was already married to your mother.
I stopped reading.
My father had learned the truth?
When?
How?
I continued.
Years later, Joseph found me.
By then, you were eighteen.
I had spent years wondering whether I should tell him about you. I finally decided that he deserved to know he had a son.
We met in a quiet café. He arrived with gray at his temples and the same nervous smile I remembered from the hospital.
