“There was a photograph of Lyra and my nephew Rhys, laughing together. And the entry beneath it broke my heart.”
She had transcribed my mother’s exact words.
“I know I’ve done something wrong in loving him. He’s someone else’s husband.”
“But he doesn’t know about the baby, and now he’s gone abroad, and I don’t know how to carry this alone.”
Rhys. My Uncle Rhys. The man I had grown up calling uncle, who bought me a card for every birthday.
My mother never told him about the pregnancy because he had already left to resettle with his family. When Mom died five years after I was born, Grandma Bess made a bold decision.
She told her family that I was left by an unknown couple and chose to adopt me. She never told anyone whose baby I actually was.
“I told myself it was protection,”
Grandma wrote.
“I was afraid, Shea. Afraid Rhys’s wife would never accept you. Afraid his daughters would resent you.”
“Afraid that telling the truth would cost you the family you’d already found in me.”
