At the bottom of the third box, I found photographs.
Dad. My mother. Another man. And the woman in red. Together. Smiling.
Then a photo of a baby. The baby had my eyes.
Digging deeper, I found an envelope with a name and an address.
“Who is Damon?” I whispered.
I grabbed my keys and drove. Forty minutes later, I knocked on the door.
The woman in red answered.
“I knew you’d come,” she said, stepping aside.
Inside sat a man in a wheelchair. Older. Gray hair. Tired eyes.
“This is Damon. And I’m Alice.”
The walls were covered in photographs of me—riding a bike at seven, graduating high school, talking with friends, playing Little League.
“You’ve been watching me?”
“I’ve been loving you from afar, Tom.”
“That’s not love. That’s surveillance.”
We sat in her living room. Damon barely spoke, just watched me with weary eyes.
Alice told me everything.
She was married to my biological father, Robert’s younger brother. She had an affair with Damon, her husband’s best friend.
When the affair came to light, she lost everything.
“He kept you. Refused to let me near you. Said I didn’t deserve to be a mother.”
“And then?”
“He died. Car accident. You were only a few months old. And Robert took you.”
“You left me?”
“I tried to fight for custody. I hired lawyers. I went to court. But Robert wouldn’t budge. He hated me.”
“You expect me to feel sorry for you?”
“I just want you to know I never stopped loving you. And even in his hatred, Robert made me a promise. He said if he was going to raise you, he’d raise you to be a good man.”
I finally understood what she meant at the funeral.
“Damon had an accident at work,” Alice added. “Lost the ability to walk. We tried for children after that, but we couldn’t.”
She looked at me with desperate eyes.
“You’re our only hope. Our only chance at being parents.”
I stood. “I’m not a chance. I’m a person. You made choices. And you lost me because of those choices. That’s not my fault.”
“I’m your mother.”
