Rebecca opened the door and immediately asked whether I was all right.
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
The boys were at school. We sat at her kitchen table, where a jar held the same cinnamon sugar Carol used to keep beside the stove.
I had rehearsed on the drive. Every sentence sounded cruel when I imagined saying it aloud.
“Dad?”
I put the letters on the table.
“Your mother asked me to find someone before she died. A woman named Anna. She was my first love.”
Rebecca listened without interrupting.
I told her about the proposal and the letter. My mother’s threats. The pregnancy Anna had tried to tell me about.
Then I reached for her hand.
“Anna is your birth mother, sweetheart. And I’m your biological father.”
Rebecca pulled back slightly.
“But you adopted me.”
“I did. I didn’t know.”
She looked at the papers, then
