My Cousin Sent Me a Photo of My Son Crying in the Arms of a Woman I’d Never Met, While My Wife Swore They Were at Her Father’s Physical Therapy Appointment — What I Learned That Night Rewrote My Entire Marriage
paperwork beside my breakfast plate without a word.
“I’m keeping my baby.”
“You’re sixteen. You have no job, no income, nothing.”
“I’ll figure it out. I’ll drop out if I have to.”
She pushed the papers closer. “Or you give him to two people who are ready for this, instead of ruining both your lives trying to prove a point.”
I kept writing letters until my aunt found me crying over one I hadn’t finished, and that was the day the letters stopped going out at all.
When my son was born, he wrapped his whole hand around one of my fingers before I even figured out how to hold him properly.
“Hi,” I whispered. “I’m your mom.”
I memorized the small crease between his eyebrows, the dark fuzz on top of his head. He didn’t cry. He just yawned, like being born was mildly inconveniencing his nap schedule.
The
couple who’d come for him waited quietly in the hallway outside my room.
“Just a few more minutes.”
My aunt squeezed my shoulder. “Renee. You already signed everything.”
I tucked his blanket under his chin twice before I could make myself hand him over. When I finally passed him to the woman waiting, his fingers caught the sleeve of my hospital gown, and I had to gently unwind them myself, one finger at a time.
Years later, I had my own apartment, a pharmacy tech job, and a phone I could finally let ring straight to voicemail when my father called.
But every year, on his birthday, I still counted. Five. Eight. Twelve.
I wondered if he liked the same terrible cartoons I used to watch. Whether anyone checked on him when he had a fever. Whether he’d ever once wondered about me.
