“Yes.”
My throat tightened.
“Did she think I had left?”
“No. She knew you were waiting nearby.”
“What did she say?”
Trudy thought for a moment.
“She was worried she hadn’t bought enough diapers.”
I laughed through my tears.
“That sounds exactly like her.”
“Then she talked about you.”
I looked up.
“What did she say?”
“She said you made pancakes too thick and refused to admit it.”
A laugh escaped me.
Even after ten years, Teagan could still embarrass me.
Then Trudy said,
“She wasn’t angry with you.”
“She should have been. I spent so much time asking about Lucas’s father that I forgot to ask my own daughter what she was afraid of.”
“Maybe,” Trudy said. “But that isn’t what she left me with.”
I asked the question I had carried for a decade.
“Did she know I loved her?”
Trudy answered immediately.
“Yes.”
That was the first thing she had given me that didn’t feel like another wound.
That evening, Lucas found the photograph on the kitchen table.
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
My first instinct was to hide it.
Instead, I turned off the faucet, dried my hands, and sat across from him.
“Yes.”
“Did he know about me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why wasn’t he here?”
“He was scared when he was young. He listened to his parents instead of making his own decision.”
Lucas waited.
“But later, he had choices of his own, and he still stayed away.”
“Did Mom want him to stay?”
“She wanted him to choose you for himself.”
“Did he?”
I forced myself not to soften the truth.
“Not when he should have.”
Lucas stared at the photo.
“Do you hate him?”
“I did before I knew who he was.”
“And now?”
“I understand him better.”
I paused.
“That isn’t the same thing as forgiving him.”
Lucas nodded.
“Do I have to meet him?”
“No.”
“But can I?”
Every frightened part of me wanted to say not yet.
For ten years, Lucas and I had been enough.
What if letting this man into our lives changed everything?
Then I remembered Teagan’s words.
You never asked why I was scared.
I wasn’t going to make Lucas pay for my fear.
“Yes,” I said.
