She shook her head.
“I didn’t answer.”
“She was eight.”
“I know.”
“She thought you didn’t want her?”
“For years.”
I leaned back.
Mary had always hated asking for favors, even something as simple as water.
She worried constantly about becoming a burden.
I’d thought it was merely her personality.
“She stopped bringing me his pictures,” her mother said.
“Stopped asking about him. I thought she was getting better.”
“She was trying not to upset you.”
“Yes.”
A cry interrupted us.
I went into the nursery and lifted our smaller daughter against my chest. She settled almost immediately.
Her sister slept nearby, one fist resting beside her cheek.
Neither knew what had happened at the hospital.
Someday, they’d ask.
I feared that conversation more than anything.
When I returned, their grandmother was studying a photograph on the refrigerator.
Mary was laughing, holding tiny shoes she’d bought before discovering we were having twins.
“She was so happy,” her mother whispered.
“She was.”
Her eyes lowered.
“Before your wedding, Mary finally told me what that night had done to her.”
“Did you apologize?”
“Of course.”
“Did she forgive you?”
“She said she knew I loved her. She just wished she’d known it when she was little.”
I sat down.
“When she became pregnant, she brought it up again,” her mother continued. “She said she couldn’t bear the thought of her girls feeling unwanted if anything happened.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I promised I’d be there. Whatever happened.”
I stared at the envelope.
“And then you disappeared.”
She flinched.
“Yes.”
Suddenly, I remembered something.
A few weeks before delivery, Mary and I had been lying in bed. One baby kicked hard enough to make her stomach move visibly.
I’d laughed.
Mary hadn’t.
