“Margaret, you should have trusted me enough to tell me.”
Mrs. Wilson nodded.
“I know.”
“You let me believe you were simply a kind neighbor.”
“I know.”
Mom wiped her cheeks.
“And what if you really are my birth mother? Do you understand how much time we've lost?”
Mrs. Wilson's face crumpled.
“Yes.”
Mom stared at the old photograph.
Then whispered:
“I spent years wondering whether the woman who gave birth to me ever thought about me. And she may have been sitting at my kitchen table every Christmas.”
Mrs. Wilson began crying harder.
“I thought about you every single day.”
I moved beside Mom and put my arm around her.
Nobody knew what to say.
The truth was too enormous.
Too complicated.
It didn't erase the love Mom had for the parents who raised her.
It didn't excuse Mrs. Wilson's decades of silence.
And the old records weren't sufficient to establish their relationship with certainty.
