…me.”
I stared at her. The old woman’s name was Margaret. Her hands were trembling on the notebook.
My husband, Tom, was adopted. He’d always known. Five years ago, after both of his adoptive parents had died, he decided to look for his birth mother. The adoption records were sealed. So he hired Margaret, a retired private investigator, and met her every morning for coffee to go over leads.
The list in her notebook was everyone connected to his birth: the hospital, the nurses, the adoption agency, the families who’d lived on the same street. My name was at the top because Tom had asked her to make sure our children’s medical history was part of the search.
Last week, Margaret had finally found the original birth certificate in a box of old records from a church agency. The birth mother was listed as “M. Doyle, age 17.”
Margaret Doyle.
“I gave him up in 1968,” she said. “My parents made me. I never told anyone. Not my husband, not my children. When your husband first walked into my office five years ago, I thought he was just another client. I had no idea I’d spent five years helping my own son look for me.”
She’d been terrified to tell him. She’d wanted to tell me first.
I took her hand. “He’s going to be so happy,” I said. “He talks about finding you every week.”
The next morning, I went to the coffee shop with Tom. I ordered three cappuccinos, even though I don’t drink coffee. Margaret was already sitting at the window table, shaking. When Tom sat down, she slid the birth certificate across the table.
He read it twice. Then he looked up at the woman he’d been having coffee with every morning for five years.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen my husband cry like that. Margaret said she’d never stopped thinking about him for fifty-eight years. Tom said, “I know. I’ve been sitting across from you.”
They still meet every morning. Now I go too, on Saturdays. I’ve started drinking hot chocolate.
