I’d been afraid to wash it thoroughly in case the whole thing came apart.
I folded it between my hands and started crying.
Daniel had fed him, taken him to school, and sat beside him when he was sick. How could I offer him this stained old bootie as proof of my love?
Fabian returned then.
I’d been afraid to wash it.
“What is that?” Fabian asked.
“Something I made before you were born. I wasn’t very good.”
I held out my hands with the bootie in my palms.
He lifted the plastic bag and stared at the contents.
“You kept it with you all this time?”
“What is that?”
I nodded.
A look crossed his face that I couldn’t decipher. He swallowed hard.
Then someone knocked on my door.
Fabian answered it.
“I’m glad you could come,” he said. “You really need to hear this.”
Someone knocked on my door.
He stepped aside.
An older man entered the room.
Decades had passed since I last saw him, but I recognized him instantly.
Daniel.
“You! You came back all those years ago, took our son, and left me behind?”
I recognized him instantly.
Daniel looked at me, then at the bootie.
His hand tightened on the doorframe.
“I came for both of you.”
“Then why did you disappear in the first place? Not even a note. I thought you’d abandoned us.”
“I told my parents about the pregnancy and our plan. They moved us out of state so you and the baby wouldn’t ‘ruin my life.'”
“I thought you’d abandoned us.”
He glanced at Fabian.
“I’d already saved most of the deposit. Once I had enough for the room, I moved out and came back.”
“You should have come to me.”
“I tried, then your parents told me you called our son a mistake.” His expression hardened.
“They lied to you, Daniel.”
“I moved out and came back.”
“They said you wanted to forget all of it. Me too,” he added.
“I never said that.”
“They showed me the papers! Your signature. They said I could take responsibility for him or the adoption would go ahead.”
“You knew what my parents were like,” I said. “Why would you believe them?”
“I never said that.”
Fabian was watching his father.
He’d spent his life hearing only one side. Now, the three of us could finally unravel the truth together.
“You knew I wanted a home with you,” I said. “Did you think I could stop wanting both of you because my parents said so?”
We could unravel the truth together.
I waited.
Daniel had to answer me this time.
“I… I thought you must have changed your mind.” His voice was low, uncertain. “Your signature was there. I was scared they’d send him away before I could stop it.”
“So you took him. I understand taking him. But after that?”
Daniel had to answer me this time.
He looked at the floor.
“I should have come back.”
“I was waiting for you. Even after they said he’d gone, I thought you might come and help me find him.”
He covered his mouth.
I had spent too many years imagining that conversation to make it easier for him now.
“I should have come back.”
“I believed you’d rejected us,” he said. “I was hurt, and raising him was hard. I let that become my reason not to ask again.”
“They threatened to make me homeless. After helping me prepare his clothes. After promising I could bring him home.”
The tears came too fast to stop them. “They tricked me into trusting them.”
“I believed you’d rejected us.”
Daniel sat when his knees caught the chair.
“I wanted him,” I said. “I searched for him. Whatever you thought of me, you should have let me tell you that.”
Daniel looked at our son. “I hear you now.”
The signature I’d hated for 31 years had convinced him I’d chosen this.
“I hear you now.”
My parents had made the threat, then hidden it from everybody who mattered.
I put the bootie in Fabian’s hand.
“You were never a mistake. Not for one minute.”
“Neither was bringing you home,” Daniel said to him. “But I was wrong about your mother.”
Fabian crouched beside my bed.
My parents had made the threat.
When I reached for him, he put his arms around me.
I held the son I’d last held as a newborn.
“You don’t have to call me anything,” I said. “I don’t expect you to feel what I feel yet.”
He squeezed my fingers.
“Could we start with you staying in touch after you leave here?”
I reached for him.
“Yes,” I said, before he finished asking. “We can do that.”
Daniel waited until we drew apart. “Can you ever forgive me?”
“I don’t know yet. But you can stay. Tell me what he was like.”
***
A few weeks later, they came for soup.
Daniel brought photographs. Fabian showed me a gap-toothed boy holding his first fish.
“Can you ever forgive me?”
“Dad claims he caught it. I did.”
“I held the net,” Daniel said.
I looked from the photograph to my son’s face.
There would be other questions, and anger I hadn’t finished with. But they were here to answer.
“What happened next?” I asked.
I looked from the photograph to my son’s face.
