I didn't tell you who the father was because I couldn't say his name out loud without falling apart, and if I'd told you he was dead, you'd have made me grieve him openly, and I wasn't strong enough for that. I needed to carry the baby and carry the grief privately, in my own way, or I wasn't going to make it through the pregnancy at all. Keeping his name a secret was the only way I could keep breathing. I'm sorry. It was selfish and it was survival at the same time.
But there's a reason I'm telling you now, in this letter, and it's the most important thing.
Michael has a mother. Margaret. She lost her only son. She doesn't have anyone left of him — except my baby. Our baby. Her grandchild.
If I don't survive this, Mom, I need you to know that our son has another grandmother out there, one who's grieving a boy she'll never see again, and who doesn't know that a piece of him is going to keep living. I found her. I told her. And I made her promise that if anything happened to me, she'd find you, and the two of you would raise my son together — not alone, either of you. Both of you. So he'd have all the family he could, and so neither of you would have to lose everything at once.
