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“Good. We’re starting with the truth.”
His mouth trembled. “I didn’t know. I panicked and went to my mother. She told me Mom had lost the baby. She said she moved away and never wanted to see me again.”
“Convenient.”
“I know.”
“The deadbeat father becomes the wounded one.”
“No,” Raymond said, wiping his face. “I’m still the man who should’ve knocked on every door until I found her. I believed the lie because it let me stop being scared. That’s on me.”
“I panicked and went to my mother.”
“So why work here?” I asked.
He looked down at his taped shoes. “I had nowhere else to go. I saw a job advertisement, and I applied.”
At the door, he turned. “Is Claudette alive?”
“Mom’s alive.”
He closed his eyes.
“Don’t look so relieved,” I said. “You still have to face her.”
“Is Claudette alive?”
***
That evening, I drove to my mother’s house.
She opened the door with a dish towel over one shoulder.
“You only stand like that when your heart’s in your mouth. Come in, baby. I just made dinner.”
I hated what I was about to do.
***
I handed my mother the graduation photo.
Her fingers tightened around the edge. “I didn’t know you had this, Anthony.”
I hated what I was about to do.
“Mom, I found him.”
The kitchen went quiet except for the old clock over the stove.
“Raymond? You found Raymond?” she whispered.
“He works in my building, Mom. He’s a cleaner.”
Mom sat down slowly, like her knees had given up.
“He’s alive?”
“Yes.”
She looked at the photo again. “Well, that’s inconvenient, baby.”
“He works in my building, Mom.”
I almost laughed, but my throat hurt too much.
“He says he came back three months later.”
Her eyes sharpened. “No, he didn’t.”
“He says he went to the laundromat. Nobody answered. Then he went to Lorraine.”
Mom’s face changed before I finished.
“What did that woman tell him?”
“That you lost the baby. That you moved away and wanted nothing to do with him.”
“What did that woman tell him?”
Mom stood so fast that the chair scraped the floor.
“She said I lost you?”
“That’s what he told me.”
For a second, I saw every year of her life stack behind her eyes. The long shifts. The late rent. The birthday cupcakes with one candle because one was all she could afford.
Then she picked up her coat.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To ask an old woman why she buried my child while I was still raising him. I know where she is.”
“She said I lost you?”
***
Lorraine lived in an assisted living facility across town.
She was smaller than I expected. Silver hair. Pink cardigan. A cross at her throat. She smiled at me first.
Then Mom stepped around my shoulder, and her smile vanished.
“Claudette.”
Mom held up the photo. “You remember me, then?”
Lorraine looked toward the nurse’s station. “This isn’t a good time.”
“It never was,” Mom said. “Did Raymond come to you looking for me?”
“You remember me, then?”
Lorraine’s mouth pressed thin. “That was thirty years ago.”
I stepped forward. “Answer her.”
Lorraine looked at me then, really looked.
“You’re his,” she said.
“I’m hers,” I replied.
“Did you tell Raymond my baby died?”
Lorraine lifted her chin. “He was nineteen. He had no money, no plan, and no sense.”
“I’m hers.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
“Fine,” Lorraine snapped. “Yes. I told him.”
Mom closed her eyes.
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