Margaret touched the photograph.
“This was the day we brought you home.”
She looked at me.
“I remember thinking that I had never seen anything so beautiful.”
I took her hand.
“You were my mother before I could even understand what a mother was.”
She began to cry.
“And Eleanor gave birth to me,” I continued. “Both things are true.”
Margaret nodded.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want us to pretend she never existed.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to.”
“And I don’t want you to think that loving her means I love you less.”
She squeezed my hand.
“I know, darling.”
For the first time, the truth no longer felt like a wall between us.
It felt like a door we could finally open together.
I placed Eleanor’s wedding photograph beside the family album.
Three people appeared in that picture, though only two were standing beside each other.
Eleanor, the mother who had given me life.
