I laughed through my tears. “That sounds like her.”
“Then she talked about you.”
I looked up.
“What about me?”
“She worried she hadn’t bought enough diapers.”
“She said you made pancakes too thick and refused to admit it.”
A laugh escaped me.
Even now, Teagan could still embarrass me.
“She wasn’t angry with you,” Trudy said.
“She should’ve been. I spent more time asking about Lucas’s father than asking my daughter about her fears.”
“Maybe. But that isn’t what she gave me.”
“She wasn’t angry with you.”
I asked the question I’d carried for years.
“Did she know I loved her?”
Trudy didn’t hesitate.
“Yes.”
That was the first thing Trudy had given me that didn’t feel like another wound.
“Did she know I loved her?”
***
That evening, Lucas found the photograph on the kitchen table.
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
My first instinct was to reach for it.
Instead, I turned off the faucet, dried my hands, sat down.
“Yes, my boy.”
Lucas climbed into the chair across from me.
“That’s him, isn’t it?”
“Did he know about me?”
“Yes.”
“Then why wasn’t he here?”
“He was scared when he was young. He listened to his parents instead of making his own choice.”
Lucas waited.
“Did he know about me?”
“But later, he had choices of his own, and he still stayed away.”
“Did Mom want him to stay?”
