“And then you were born,” Mom said. “In 1971. After two miscarriages. You were my miracle.”
She looked at me.
“I never told you,” she said. “I’m so sorry, Annie. I never told you. I thought about it a thousand times. When you were sixteen. When you got married. When you had Tyler. When Daddy died.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Mom looked down at the quilt in her lap.
“Because I was ashamed,” she said quietly. “Because in 1963, girls like me were a disgrace. My mother told me so. The sisters told me so. The priest at St. Brigid’s told me so every Sunday. You’ve sinned. You’ve shamed your family. The best thing you can do for that baby is disappear from his life forever.”
She shook her head.
“I believed them,” she said. “For sixty years. I believed that if anybody ever found out, they’d look at me differently. You’d look at me differently.”
“Mom,” I whispered.
“I didn’t want to be the girl from St. Brigid’s,” she said. “I wanted to be your mother. Just your mother. Who makes pie on Sundays.”
“So what happened?” I said. “This spring?”
Mom took a shaky breath.
“A letter came,” she said. “In April. To my house. From a woman named Carol Reiner. In Pittsburgh.”
“His wife.”
“His wife,” Mom said. “She said her husband had been adopted. She said he’d always wondered about his birth mother but never looked because he didn’t want to hurt his adoptive parents. They’re both gone now. His father died in 2011. His mother in 2020.”
She swallowed.
“Carol said their daughter, Jenna, did one of those DNA tests last Christmas. Ancestry. For fun. And she got a match.”
Mom looked at me.
“You did one too,” she said. “Remember? Three years ago. Tyler bought you one for your birthday.”
I went cold.
I remembered. I’d spit in a tube and mailed it off and looked at my pie chart of ethnicities for about ten minutes. Irish, Polish, a little German. I’d never logged in again.
“Jenna matched with you,” Mom said. “As a close relative. A first cousin or a half-aunt. Carol said they couldn’t figure out how. You weren’t on any family tree they knew.”
“So they found you.”
“They found Margaret first,” Mom said. “Margaret’s daughter. The one Margaret gave up in 1963. She’d done a DNA test too. She and Margaret found each other in 2014. Margaret told her everything. About St. Brigid’s. About her friend June who had a baby boy three weeks after her.”
She shook her head.
“Margaret’s daughter remembered my name,” Mom said. “June Kowalski. My maiden name. Carol Reiner found me from that.”
“Carol’s letter said Sam had always known he was born at St. Brigid’s,” Mom said. “His adoptive mother told him when he was twelve. She gave him the only thing that came with him.”
She looked at the dead camera in my lap.
“The blanket,” she said. “Yellow. With ducks. She kept it for sixty years. She gave it to him when she was dying.”
“And the letter said something else,” Mom said.
Her voice broke completely.
“It said Sam had leukemia.”
I stopped breathing.
“Acute myeloid leukemia,” Mom said. “Diagnosed in February. He’d had chemotherapy. Two rounds. It didn’t work. The doctors said the only chance was a bone marrow transplant. A stem cell transplant.”
“And they need a donor.”
“They need a match,” Mom said. “They searched the registry. Be The Match. Millions of people. Nobody matched him well enough. He’s mostly Irish and Polish. That’s harder, they said. Fewer donors.”
She looked at me.
“His best chance,” she said, “is a sibling.”
The room went completely silent.
I looked at the dead camera in my lap.
HI ANNIE. I’M SAM. I’M YOUR BROTHER.
(PLEASE HURRY)
“Carol’s letter asked if I had any other children,” Mom said. “She said even a half-sibling has a chance. One in four, maybe. The doctors said it was worth trying.”
“Mom,” I said. “That was April.”
“I know.”
“It’s October.”
“I know,” Mom whispered.
“Six months. You knew for six months. That I might be a match. For my brother. Who’s dying.”
She put her face in her hands.
“I couldn’t,” she said through her fingers. “I couldn’t tell you. I tried. A hundred times. Every Sunday at dinner. I’d sit there and look at you across the pot roast and open my mouth. And nothing would come out.”
She was sobbing now.
“Sixty-three years,” she said. “Sixty-three years I kept it. I couldn’t say the words. Annie, you have a brother. I gave him away. He’s dying. He needs you. I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.”
“So I wrote back to Carol,” Mom said. “In May. I told her I had a daughter. I told her your name. I told her I’d talk to you.”
“And you didn’t.”
“I didn’t,” Mom said. “I wrote to Carol every week. I wrote to Sam. He wrote back. Long letters. About his life. About his parents. About his work. He’s a high school chemistry teacher. Did you know that? Thirty-five years. At Taylor Allderdice in Pittsburgh.”
She smiled. Through her tears.
“He has my handwriting,” she said. “Isn’t that strange? He writes his Js just like I do. Big loop at the bottom.”
“And every week,” Mom said, “Carol would write and ask. Have you talked to Annie yet? Have you asked her? And I’d write back and say not yet. Soon. I’m trying.”
She looked at me.
“And I stopped eating,” she said quietly.
I stared at her.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “Every time I sat down to eat, I thought about him. In a hospital bed. In Pittsburgh. Waiting. While I sat in my kitchen with my pot roast. Too much of a coward to tell my daughter.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t swallow. It was like something was stuck in my throat.”
“Since May?”
Mom nodded.
“That’s why the sweaters,” I said slowly. “The big cardigans. In the summer. That’s why you’ve been wearing Dad’s old sweaters.”
“I didn’t want you to notice,” Mom said. “I’ve lost forty-one pounds since May, Annie. I hid it under Daddy’s sweaters.”
I put my hand over my mouth.
Forty-one pounds.
Every Sunday. Every single Sunday since May. I’d sat across the table from my mother at Sunday dinner. I’d watched her cut the pie into eight perfect slices.
I’d never once watched her eat it.
“And then in September,” Mom said, “Carol called. On the phone. For the first time. She said Sam was getting worse. She said the doctors at UPMC Shadyside were saying weeks, maybe. Not months. She said if there was any chance at all, they needed to test you now.”
She took a breath.
“And she said Sam had asked for something,” Mom said. “Before it was too late.”
“What?”
Mom looked at me.
“He asked to meet me,” she said. “His birth mother. Just once. To say hello. And thank you. And goodbye.”
“So I told you I was going to visit Margaret,” Mom said. “Because she was the only one who ever knew. I thought if I said her name, it would give me courage. Like she was coming with me.”
She almost smiled.
“I gave you her old phone number,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d call. I’m sorry. That was cruel.”
“Where did you go, Mom? Really?”
“I took the train to Erie,” Mom said. “On Monday. Like I told you. I went to St. Brigid’s first. It’s not a home anymore. It’s apartments now. Senior apartments. I stood outside on the sidewalk for an hour.”
She closed her eyes.
“Then I went to Calvary Cemetery,” she said. “To Margaret’s grave. I sat there all afternoon. I told her I was going to meet him. I told her I was scared.”
She opened her eyes.
“Then I took the bus to Pittsburgh,” she said. “That night. And Carol picked me up at the station.”
“I met him on Tuesday,” Mom said. “In Room 612. At eleven in the morning.”
She was crying again. Quietly.
“I walked in the door,” she said. “And he was sitting up in bed. And he looked at me.”
She put her hand over her heart.
“And he said, Hi, Mom.”
I couldn’t speak.
“Sixty-three years,” Mom whispered. “Sixty-three years since Sister Agnes took him out of my arms. And he looked at me and said Hi, Mom. Like he’d been waiting his whole life to say it.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Mom said. “I couldn’t. I just sat down. And held his hand. And we both cried for an hour.”
She looked at the dead camera.
“Carol took that picture,” she said. “The first one. I didn’t know she was taking it.”
“I stayed six days,” Mom said. “At Carol’s house. In their guest room. I sat with him every day. From eight in the morning until the nurses made me leave at nine at night. I slept in the chair next to his bed two nights.”
“You didn’t eat,” I said.
“I couldn’t,” Mom said. “I was so happy, Annie. And so sad. All at the same time. I’d look at him and think, I have my son back. And I’m going to lose him again.”
She swallowed.
“He told me everything,” she said. “His whole life. His parents. Good people. Dr. and Mrs. Reiner. He said they loved him so much. He said he never once felt unwanted.” Her voice cracked. “He said his mother used to tell him, every night when he was little, Somebody loved you very much before we ever met you. She knitted you a blanket with ducks.”
She put her face in her hands.
“His mother,” she said through her fingers. “His adoptive mother. Told him every night that I loved him. For sixty years. I never knew.”
“He showed me the blanket,” Mom said. “On Wednesday. Carol brought it from home. It was in a box. Wrapped in tissue paper. He’d kept it in his closet his whole life.”
She looked up at me.
“The ducks were still there,” she said. “Every one. Margaret helped me with them. In the laundry room. Fifty-five years ago. Every stitch.”
