I am sorry I could not tell you while I was alive.
I am sorry for every birthday I missed, every school photograph I never saw, and every time I wondered whether you were happy.
But please remember this: you were never unwanted.
You were loved before you took your first breath.
And you were loved every day I was forced to live without you.
Your mother,
Eleanor.
I broke down.
Mr. Reed sat beside me without speaking.
I cried for the mother I had never known, for the years she had spent alone, and for the young woman who had handed her baby to strangers because she believed it was the only way to give him a future.
I cried for my father, too.
For the secret he had carried.
For the woman he had loved before my mother.
And for the fact that all three of us had lived our lives without knowing the whole truth.
