“The boy is asking questions,” the second letter read, dated 1960. “He has your eyes. It is a shame he will never know his mother.” The room spun. The boy? We didn’t have a son until Isaac was born in 1962.
I dropped the letter, staring at the paper as if it were a venomous snake. Sarah had a child before Isaac? A child she had kept secret for our entire marriage? I thought back to the nights she would wake up crying, claiming it was just a bad dream. I thought about the way she would stare at children in the park, a longing look I couldn’t place. I had assumed she was just sad because we were struggling to conceive at the time. But she was mourning a child she had left behind.
I grabbed the next letter, tearing the envelope in my haste. “We have handled the situation. The adoption is closed. You are dead to him.” Adoption. She had given a child up? Or had she been forced to?
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