…fathered him. A married state senator who couldn’t afford a scandal.”
I closed my eyes. In 1989, I’d been a twenty-one-year-old intern in the senator’s office. He’d told me he was separated from his wife. He wasn’t. When I became pregnant, he disappeared from my life. I’d never told my parents who the father was. Apparently, they’d found out.
The attorney, Mr. Hale, explained. The senator’s lawyers had approached my parents. They offered my sister, Ruth, $250,000 to raise the baby as her own, out of state, and to keep his paternity secret forever. My parents agreed, believing it would protect me. While I recovered in the hospital, they told me my son had died.
I’d visited an empty grave for thirty-seven years.
My son’s name was Daniel. He was thirty-seven, a high school music teacher, about to be married. Ruth had raised him as her own. She’d been planning to tell him the truth before his wedding because his fiancée wanted to know his family’s medical history.
I called Ruth. She cried and said she’d wanted to tell me for years, but our parents had made her swear. “I loved him,” she said. “I always loved him. But he was never mine.”
Ruth told Daniel the truth that week. He asked to meet me.
We met at a small park near his school. He looked at me for a long time. Then he touched the birthmark on his neck and said, “Aunt Ruth says you have the same one.” I pulled my collar aside. He laughed and cried at the same time.
Daniel got married in June. I sat in the front row, beside Ruth. During the mother-son dance, he walked over to both of us and held out one hand to each.
