Agnes Home. We were scared, unmarried, and pressured into decisions we barely understood. I gave birth first. Margaret gave birth three days later. The records were altered. The babies were moved. One child stayed. One child disappeared into adoption.”
She stopped again, but this time nobody pushed her.
I could hear the wall clock in the hallway.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Leo leaned against me.
“Mom?” he whispered.
I placed my arm around his shoulders, though I barely felt steady enough to stand.
My father’s voice came out hollow. “Margaret… did you have another child?”
She looked at him then.
And in that look, I saw the first crack in the version of my mother I had known all my life.
“Yes,” she whispered.
My father’s face drained.
“Before me?”
She nodded.
“When you were seventeen?”
“Yes.”
He pushed back from the table. The chair legs scraped the floor.
Not in
