“So my dad just invented a dead woman?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Anna looked at the birthday gift still sitting between us.
“Can we sit down?”
We moved inside and sat at the dining table.
I placed the birth certificate between us.
“Start from the beginning.”
Anna took a deep breath.
“I met your father when I was twenty-two. He was twenty-five.”
They dated for about a year.
Then Anna became pregnant.
Richard panicked.
His parents were wealthy and heavily involved in his life. Anna came from a working-class family and was balancing community college with a part-time job.
“They decided I wasn’t good enough for him,” she said.
“Did Dad think that too?”
She hesitated.
“Sometimes.”
She told me his parents wanted her to end the pregnancy.
She refused.
She begged Richard to stand by her.
She believed that once he held his child, everything would change.
And, in some ways, it did.
After I was born, Richard became obsessed with giving me what he called “stability.”
He had a career, a house, and family support.
Anna had none of those things.
“He convinced me you’d have a better life with him,” she said.
“So he wanted you to give me away?”
