“Then why give it to you?”
Grace wiped her cheek.
“I wanted us to know what really happened.”
Emma looked down.
“But it made us promise that we would never give you the letter.”
I looked at them at three.
“Why?”
Sophie’s voice broke.
“Because he said if you knew the truth, you could see us differently. Maybe you wouldn’t want us anymore.”
I almost laughed.
“What truth could that do?”
No one answered.
Emma pushed the envelope towards me.
My mother’s handwriting was in the front.
Older.
More trembling.
But unmistakable.
I opened it.
The paper inside smelled slightly rancid, as if it had been years waiting in a drawer.
The first line played like a slap.
“My dear son, I left because I found out what none of you should ever know…”
I stopped.
Grace covered her mouth.
I kept reading.
Mom wrote that she had waited until the girls were adults because she could not take the truth to the grave, but that she still could not be encouraged to tell usI have taken a breath.
I turned them down because I knew you were coming home.”
I read that phrase twice.
Then came the lines that finally explained why my mother had stopped at that door 20 years earlier.
“I knew you, Aaron, I knew that if I left those babies in your arms, you would never let them go.
And if you took them, I could leave knowing that they were with someone I trusted without having to stay enough to fix it myself.
I told myself that I only needed time to overcome my grief. Then the months passed, I met someone, and starting over became easier than admitting what I had done to all of you.”
I stopped reading.
For 20 years, she had believed that Mom had left because the grief and three newborns had finally broken her.
Now I understood something uglier.
He had not limited himself to getting away from the triplets.
She had chosen who would replace her.
And he had made sure I never knew I had a choice.
***
For a long time, no one moved.
I looked at Mom’s line.
I knew you, Aaron. I knew that if I left those babies in your arms, you’d never let them go.
Emma’s voice broke.
“Dad?”
I carefully folded the letter.
Grace was crying openly now.
Sophie seemed terrified.
“There were people who would have taken us,” she whispered.
