Nobody said anything.
“I sat in his office,” Ben went on, “and I realized what I’d done. I realized I’d thrown away my wife and my daughter because of a hair color. Because I was too much of a coward to ever look at the truth. So when I said if we don’t see her, we’re finished, I didn’t mean the test. I meant us. I meant this family. I knew if I didn’t come here today and tell you the truth, the whole truth, I’d lose you both forever. And I’d deserve it.”
He slid off the armchair and knelt on my parents’ carpet.
“I’m not here to ask for a test, Claire. I don’t need one. I don’t care about a test. I’m here because you deserved the truth six years ago and I was too ashamed to give it to you. I’m here because whatever you decide, you should decide it knowing who I really am.”
My mom stood up.
She walked out of the room without a word. I heard her go up the stairs. I heard the closet in the hallway open. Everyone stayed frozen, waiting.
She came back down holding an old photo album with a cracked green leather cover. She sat down next to me and opened it on my lap, flipping through the brittle pages until she found the one she wanted.
A black and white photograph. A young man in a work shirt, leaning against an old truck, grinning at the camera with a cigarette behind his ear.
Even in black and white, you could see his hair was lighter than everything around it. Thick and wavy and bright.
My mom pulled a second photo out from behind it. This one was in color. Faded, the way old photos from the seventies are faded. The same man, older, holding a baby on his knee at a picnic table.
