Page 129 of Not a Word

His mother was standing there in the front hall, a tumbler of scotch in her hand, as though expecting them. “Hello, Holden,” she said. “Hello, Gage.”

On the way over, Holden had been rehearsing in his head what he would say, the questions he would ask. Why had she never told him about his real mother, how he was the product of an arrangement with a surrogate? That someone had been paid to have him? Wasn’t that something he was entitled to know?

And the big question: Did that make it easier? Was a child you’d never given birth to easier to threaten with a withdrawal of affection?

But what he ended up saying was: “Hi, Mom.”

She looks a hundred, he thought as Catherine stood there before him. Could she have grown shorter in the last twenty-four hours? She had withered, her head hung low. That defiant chin was now hiding her neck.

She set the tumbler on a side table, came up to Holden, and gave him a hug. Unable to just stand there, he returned it. Then she turned to Gage and took him in her arms.

“Hi, Grandma,” Gage said, hugging her in return. He had in his right hand the car magazine he’d found in Alicia’s apartment. Catherine took no notice of it.

“Why don’t we go sit out back,” she said, grabbing her drink on the way.

As they followed her through the kitchen she asked whether either of them would like anything.

“I’m okay,” Gage said.

Holden said nothing.

They went out onto the deck. Catherine flicked on an outside lamp as the sky now had a twilight glow.

She sat on one of the cushioned deck chairs and with a wave of the hand invited her two visitors to do the same. A half-full bottle of scotch rested on a small table next to her.

While Holden had his eyes on his mother, Gage looked out across the yard to the pond and the old, rotting rowboat that sat at its edge, tall grasses and flowers growing out of it, the family artifact overtaken by nature. The deck light reflected on the smooth surface of the water.

“You should have told me,” Holden said.

“It wasn’t my decision alone,” she said, taking a long sip of her scotch. “A surrogate has the expectation of privacy.”

“You didn’t have to tell me her name.”

“No, but once you knew of her, you’d have wanted to seek her out. Your father and I talked about it a number of times. When you got older, we’d say. When the time was right. But the perfect time never came along, and when you had your troubles, we worried that would only set you back more.”

“Maybe it would have helped.”

“How?” Catherine asked.

“It would have explained things. How it was different, between me and Reece.”

“It was never different.”

He looked at her the way one might view a child who denied breaking a window, hand still in the baseball glove, the ball inside the house.

“Of course it was. You’d never have said to Reece what you said to me. He’s your own flesh and blood.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Reece says it wasn’t an affair.”

“You talked to him.”

“After I called you. He said he just found out and I called him a liar.”

His mother nodded. “He didn’t keep anything from you. He didn’t know. And he’s right. It wasn’t an affair. Not then. She was hired. But a couple of years ago, she and your father ran into each other and things . . . developed.”

“She had pictures of me,” Holden sai\d.