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“I panicked,” he said, sitting across from me at our kitchen table, Renata and both boys waiting in the next room. “The medical bills from your delivery were already enormous. I was scared of raising two children I didn’t feel financially prepared for, and Renata offered a way out that felt, at the time, considerably less permanent than it apparently turned out to be.”
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“You told me our son died,” I said. “You let me grieve a living child for eight years.”
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“I know,” Foster said. “I’ve hated myself for it every single day since, and I still let it continue, which I understand makes the apology mean considerably less than it should.”
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“How did you manage it?” I asked. “Visiting both of them. Splitting your entire life.”
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“Business trips to the regional office,” Foster said. “Two, sometimes three times a month. I told you it was work. I told Renata it was helping an aunt. I’ve spent eight years being exactly the kind of person I never once wanted to become.”
