My parents threw me out at nineteen because I wouldn’t end my pregnancy. Ten years later I drove back with my son and knocked on the same door — and I finally told them who his father was.

I shook my head. Tears were already running down my cheeks, but I had promised someone I loved that I would keep his secret until he was ready to tell the world himself.

And that promise had become the most difficult thing I had ever carried.

“I’m keeping the baby,” I whispered.

My father laughed once, without humor.

“You’re a child yourself.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have a degree. You don’t have a job that can support a child. You don’t even have enough money to pay your own bills.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“With what? Hope?”

I had no answer.

He stepped closer.

“Then get rid of it.”

I closed my eyes.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Because the child inside me was the last chance my dying brother had to leave something of himself in this world.

Because my brother had begged me to help him become a father.

Because he had trusted me when he could no longer trust anyone else with his future.