Gerald opened the envelope.
Inside was a photograph.
It was old, the colors softened by time. A young woman stood in front of a red pickup truck, wearing a yellow sundress and laughing into the sunlight. Beside her stood a younger Gerald, maybe twenty-seven, hair dark and thick, one arm around her waist.
The woman was my mother.
Not the polished, pearl-wearing Eleanor Crawford who cut people with politeness and smiled only when someone important was watching. This woman looked alive. Freckled. Wind-touched. Happy.
I stared at the picture until my eyes burned.
“That’s my mother,” I said.
Gerald nodded.
“And that was me, a very long time ago.”
I swallowed. “Were you… friends?”
A sad smile crossed his face.
“No, Holly. We were more than friends.”
The beeping monitor seemed louder now.
A pulse. A warning.
Gerald took another paper from the envelope. It was a letter, the handwriting old-fashioned and slanted.
“I loved Eleanor before she became Eleanor Crawford,” he said. “Back then, she was Ellie Hart. We were young, stupid, and poor, but I thought we were happy. We had a little rental house picked out near the lake. I had a job at the mill. She was taking classes at the community college. We were going to get married.”
He paused.
“Then her parents found out she was pregnant.”
The air left my lungs.
For several seconds, I heard nothing except the machine beside me.
Pregnant.
My mother. Gerald.
I could not make the pieces fit.
Gerald’s voice grew rougher.
“Her family hated me. Said I was beneath her. Said I’d ruin her life. I didn’t come from the kind of people they wanted their daughter tied to. I had grease under my nails and no inheritance. Richard Crawford, on the other hand, had a family name, a business degree, and a father who owned half the real estate in town.”
“My father,” I said automatically.
