At 18, I was forced to give up my newborn son. For 31 years, I searched for him. Then the surgeon who saved my life wore the cross I had tucked into his blanket, and the story I had been told began to unravel.
I was 18 when I told my parents I was pregnant.
My mother dropped the dish towel.
My father shoved his chair back so hard it struck the wall.
“Who knocked you up?” he yelled. “Give me his name. When I get my hands on him…”
I clutched at the silver cross I wore around my neck. It had belonged to my grandmother. Her initials, E. M, were engraved on the back.
I was pregnant.
“No! I’m not telling you.”
The words were out before I thought them through.
I’d never defied my parents so openly before.
Mom shook her finger at me.
“Don’t speak to your father that way. After everything we’ve done for you.”
“Give me his name.”
“You tell me his name, now.” Dad braced his palms against the table and loomed over me. “I’m going to speak to his parents myself and sort this mess out.”
They were calling my baby a mess.
I put my hand over my stomach. “I’m keeping my baby.”
“You have no money,” Dad said. “No home except this one. Remember that before you start making demands.”
“I’m keeping my baby.”
Dad was wrong.
I had Daniel, my baby’s father.
When I’d told him I was pregnant last week, he’d been concerned first, then ecstatic.
He held me close and lifted me off my feet.
“I’m going to be a dad!” he crowed.
Dad was wrong.
We’d talked for hours and eventually made a plan.
***
“We rent something small,” he’d said. “One bedroom. I’ll paint it yellow.”
“What if I hate yellow?”
“Then you choose. I’ll still paint it.”
I’d laughed and leaned against him. “Your parents won’t like it.”
We made a plan.
“Neither will yours. But they won’t be paying the rent.”
He’d pressed his hand over mine on my stomach.
“I’ll come for both of you. I promise.”
***
Dad sent me to my room when he finally realized I wasn’t going to tell him who the baby’s father was.
I waited a few minutes, then slipped out the window to see Daniel.
“I’ll come for both of you. I promise.”
Daniel hadn’t been around lately, but I needed him to know what had just happened.
I hurried to his house, then froze on the sidewalk.
There was a for-sale sign on his lawn.
I knocked, walked around the side, and peered through a window.
The sofa where we’d sat together was gone. So were the curtains.
Daniel hadn’t been around lately.
A neighbor was watering her roses.
“They moved,” she said. “Didn’t leave an address, hon.”
“When?”
“Three days ago.”
I stayed on the step after she went inside.
“They moved.”
Daniel knew about the baby.
Whatever he’d decided about me, how could he leave without explaining?
***
I tried calling, but the number was disconnected.
