She showed me pictures of you. Her baby girl with the curly hair. She said you were the reason she took the early shift, so she could finish her nursing classes at night and give you a better life.
On October 12th, my soccer ball rolled into the street. I ran after it. I didn’t look. A man ran the red light on Smithville Road. Your mother didn’t hesitate.
I lived. She didn’t.
I’ve spent thirty-one years trying to figure out how to deserve that.
I couldn’t breathe.
Everything was rearranging itself in my head. The chamomile with milk—my mother’s way, which she must have described to a little boy on a cold morning. The song. The pause. The box marked D.H.
Diane Hale.
I kept reading.
My parents wanted to adopt you. I need you to know that. They tried. But your mother had listed a cousin in Indiana as your guardian, and by the time the courts sorted out that the cousin couldn’t take you, you were already in the system, and my father had started drinking. Our family fell apart under the weight of what happened. My parents divorced two years later.
