“Then the years kept passing, and I didn’t know how to begin.”
I understood that feeling.
I was thirty-nine, and I’d nearly let another three days pass before making the call.
⸻
Before I left, Thomas gave me a small photograph.
Rebecca was seventeen.
She stood beside a Christmas tree, wearing a red sweater and holding a wrapped present.
On the back, in her handwriting, were four words.
For my little boy.
Thomas explained that she’d bought the present before I was born.
A stuffed brown bear.
He’d kept it all these years.
Then he went into the house and returned with a small box.
Inside was the bear.
Its fur was faded.
One ear had been repaired with blue thread.
But it was still there.
Waiting.
I held it carefully.
For the first time in my life, I had something my biological mother had chosen for me.
⸻
A month later, I returned to Eleanor’s grave.
I brought flowers.
And a photograph.
It showed Thomas and me sitting together on his porch.
We were both smiling.
I placed the photograph beside the headstone.
“Thank you,” I said.
I thought about the wedding.
The white dress.
The chaplain.
The way Eleanor had held up her ring and smiled for the camera.
At the time, I’d believed I was giving a dying woman one beautiful memory.
I hadn’t understood that she was carrying a piece of my history.
She’d spent her final weeks listening to me talk about ordinary things.
Work.
My childhood.
My mother.
My plans.
She’d known there was more to the story.
But she never made me feel like a project.
She let me be her friend.
And when I offered her a wedding, she accepted it for what it was.
