“What happened afterward?”
“My parents arranged an adoption. I was seventeen, frightened, and completely dependent on them. They told me it was the only sensible choice.”
“Did you
want to keep her?”
Susan covered her mouth.
For a moment, she couldn’t answer.
“More than anything.”
She told me about the years that followed.
About waking in the middle of the night wondering whether her daughter was warm enough.
About secretly buying birthday cards she had nowhere to send.
About the small silver bracelet she’d worn beneath her sleeve for decades.
It had belonged to Emily during those twenty minutes in the hospital.
Susan had never told her husband.
When they divorced, she’d convinced herself that the secret should
remain buried.
Then, six years earlier, she’d received a letter from the adoption agency.
Emily was searching for her biological mother.
Susan had been terrified.
She’d kept the letter in a drawer for almost a year.
