I never wanted you to feel like you owed me.
My eyes stung, and the sting turned into heat behind them, and then into a sharp wet pressure that made my throat close.
I inhaled through it.
I kept reading.
I didn’t tell you everything because I knew you, Tess. I knew you’d come running. You’d have dropped your life and pretended it was your choice, and you’d have called it duty, and you’d have stayed out of stubbornness and guilt. And I couldn’t stomach the thought of you living that way.
If I’d told you the truth, you’d have stayed for the wrong reasons.
I went still.
The words didn’t look like much on the page. Just ink. Just a sentence.
But something in my body reacted like it’d been struck.
My hands went numb. My scalp prickled. My stomach rolled, slow and sick, like it was trying to decide whether it wanted to empty itself or turn into stone.
The truth.
He’d said it twice now, in two different ways, like he’d been circling it.
I read the sentence again, slower.
If I’d told you the truth, you’d have stayed for the wrong reasons.
My pulse thudded hard against my throat. I tasted metal.
I forced myself to move. I turned the page with fingers that didn’t feel like mine.
I don’t know what you remember about your mother. I don’t know what you remember about coming to me, and it wasn’t my story to tell. But I’m telling you now, because you deserve to know and because I don’t want you to spend your life thinking you were unwanted.
You were wanted.
You were loved.
You were mine before you ever knew my name.
The kitchen tipped.
Not literally, but it felt like it, like gravity changed its mind and for one hot second the world didn’t know which way was down.
My lungs locked.
I tried to breathe and couldn’t.
A sound came out of me, small and raw, like a wounded animal. I pressed my hand over my mouth to choke it back, but the tears came anyway, hot and fast, spilling down my cheeks and onto the paper.
I shook my head once, hard, like I could throw the sentence off my skin.
“You’re lying,” I whispered to the empty house, but my voice sounded thin and terrified, and I already knew hewasn’t.
I wiped my face with the back of my wrist and looked again. The words didn’t change.
You were mine before you ever knew my name.
My stomach flipped, hard enough that I had to put my head down for a second. The table was cool against my forehead. The paperwork under my arms crinkled. My breath came in sharp pulls, too shallow, too fast.
