My knees weakened.
Elena pulled a chair toward me.
I sat.
The tape continued.
“If you are hearing this, then one of two things has happened. Either I finally became brave enough to give this to you…”
A pause.
“…or I died a coward.”
I closed my eyes.
My mother breathed shakily on the recording.
“I hope it was the first.”
It hadn’t been.
“I have already written down some of what I did to you and Douglas. There are no words that can make those choices acceptable. I thought youth was a disease people recovered from. I thought love at nineteen could not possibly know itself.”
Douglas looked at me.
I couldn’t look back.
The recording continued.
“But this tape is not about the letters.”
A long hiss of silence.
“It is about September 1987.”
Lucas leaned forward.
My mother’s voice changed.
Softer.
Afraid.
“A child was born on September seventeenth.”
