I dialed the number, desperate for answers.
The phone felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. When a woman’s gentle, guarded voice answered, I forced the words out: “My name is Chris. I just found a photo of my wife, Kate, holding a baby… and this number was written on the back.”
Silence stretched so long I thought she’d hung up. Then, softly, she whispered, “Oh, Chris. I’ve been waiting for this call for years.”
I swallowed hard. “Kate died. Her funeral was today.”
A pause. Then her voice broke. “I’m so sorry. I’m Jess. I… I adopted Kate’s daughter, Lily.”
The room tilted. I gripped the edge of the bed to steady myself. “Daughter?”
“She was nineteen,” Jess explained gently. “A freshman in college. Kate knew she couldn’t give the baby the life she deserved. It was the hardest decision she ever made.”
I felt anger surge through the grief. “We tried for years—years of treatments, specialists, heartbreak. She never said a word about having a baby before me. Never.”
“She was terrified,” Jess said softly. “Afraid you’d judge her, afraid you’d leave. She loved you more than anything, Chris. Sometimes love makes us hide the things we can’t bear to lose.”
I closed my eyes, memories rushing in. Her tears during failed treatments. The way she’d grip my hand too tightly when we passed playgrounds. I had thought it was the shared pain of not having children. But now I wondered—had it all been tied to the daughter she gave up?
