“Mom, promise you won’t hate us for what we hid from you?”
I stared at them and couldn’t find a response.
“A few months ago, Raymond sat us down at his place. He said he’d been carrying something for 20 years, and we deserved to know before he got any older.”
I felt my hands go cold on the tablecloth.
“There was no mother who left us on the porch, Mom. There was a surrogate. Raymond arranged the whole thing. Privately. He paid for everything,” Caleb explained.
I heard myself make a sound that wasn’t quite a word.
“He said you’d been told you couldn’t have kids,” Noah went on quietly. “And he knew you’d never accept help if it looked like charity. So he… he staged it.”
“Staged it?”
“The basket. The porch. The anonymous drop. He made sure the paperwork trail led to foster care so you could choose us. On your own. Without ever knowing he had anything to do with it.”
