I stayed away.
I let myself believe it was easier for everyone.*
*His name is Daniel.
He is five years old.
I have never met him.*
*I found out six weeks ago that Diane is sick.
Not the way I am sick — she may recover.
But she has no family nearby, and Daniel has no one else.
I have been trying to figure out how to tell you.
I kept starting and stopping.
I was ashamed.
I am ashamed.*
*I am not asking you to raise him.
I am not asking you to forgive me right away.
I am asking you to make sure he is not alone.
Whatever that looks like.
Whatever you can manage.
I know this is not fair.*
*You are the most decent person I have ever known.
That is not a small thing to say.
It is the reason I am asking.*
*I’m sorry.
I am so sorry.*
*— Mark*
—
I folded the letter along its original creases.
My hands were steady by then, which surprised me.
The doctor was watching me carefully.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“He told me there was a child,” he said.
“He didn’t tell me the details.”
“Did he tell you what he was asking me to do?”
“No.”
I looked at the photograph again.
The little boy was sitting on a front step, squinting into the sun.
He was wearing a striped shirt with a small stain near the collar.
He looked like a child who had just been called in from playing and hadn’t quite stopped moving yet.
He looked exactly like Mark.
“I need to sit down,” I said.
The doctor led me to a small waiting area off the main corridor.
Two chairs, a low table, a window that looked onto a concrete wall.
He brought me a cup of water I didn’t drink.
“Is there someone I can call for you?” he asked.
“Not yet.”
He nodded and left me alone.
I sat with the letter in my lap and the photograph face-up on the table.
I looked at Daniel’s squinting face.
I looked at my own hands resting on my stomach, where our daughter had gone quiet.
Mark had a son.
He had known for five years and said nothing.
He had sat beside me on that porch with his hand on my belly and talked about giving other families more time, and he had a five-year-old boy somewhere in this city he had never once mentioned.
