my father murmured.
“I know,” I said. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
My voice rose despite my effort to keep calm. Leo looked at me, and I forced myself to breathe.
“I was nineteen. Pregnant. Alone. You threw me out. Noah was dead. His parents were drowning in grief, and I had no proof except my word. I didn’t know how to walk up to a grieving mother and say, ‘By the way, your son left something behind.’”
My mother sat on the couch, covering her face.
“I wrote letters,” I said.
She looked up sharply.
“What letters?”
“To you. To both of you. For almost a year after I left.”
My father frowned. “We never got letters.”
I reached into my purse and pulled out a folded plastic envelope. Inside were copies I had kept for myself, paper worn from being handled over the years.
“I stopped
