I handed it back.
“Why would my mother be involved in your adoption?”
“That’s what Margaret wanted to know.”
Douglas’s voice weakened on his wife’s name.
For the first time, I really thought about her.
Margaret.
For most of my life, she’d been almost imaginary.
The woman who had gotten the life I believed I’d lost.
The wife.
The reason Douglas had become untouchable.
I had resented her without knowing her.
But now I knew she had learned the truth.
She had wanted Douglas to find me.
And she had raised Lucas.
“What was she like?” I asked suddenly.
Douglas seemed surprised.
“Margaret?”
I nodded.
His expression changed.
Grief moved through it, quiet and familiar.
“Kind.”
He looked toward Lucas.
“Stubborn.”
Lucas smiled.
“Extremely stubborn.”
“Terrible singer.”
“Criminally terrible.”
Douglas’s smile grew.
“But she sang constantly.”
He looked at me again.
“She deserved better than the situation I gave her.”
