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She stopped for a moment, looked around in the green space, and then refocused on me.
“My pregnancy was…difficult. I was sick all the time. I was nauseous for months on end, and on top of all that, you came early. Almost six weeks,” she said.
“I was a preemie?” I said.
“You were. But you were a healthy size for your gestational period. Six pounds, all cheeks and thighs,” she said with a smile, looking wistful.
“Guess not much has changed,” I said.
“Nope. You’re still the most beautiful girl I have ever seen,” she said.
I smiled, but some part of me wanted to recoil from the words. I wasn’t sure how to react to a compliment, a genuine expression of love from a parent.
She seemed to sense my discomfort and reached over to touch my hand but quickly pulled back.
“About a month after you were born, Raphael came home late. Drunk,” she said.
“That doesn’t seem like him. To lose control.”
“It wasn’t. I guess he had to build up the nerve to say what he wanted to say to me,” she said.
“And what was that?”
“I can be direct?” she said, asking for my permission.
“Always. In fact, I insist on it.”
“Well, he asked me whose baby I was trying to put off on him,” she said.
She looked away again, the expression on her face one I couldn’t exactly read.
“I was exhausted, could barely see straight. You were a sweet baby, but you still woke up every three hours, and I was helping out at the company, burning it at both ends.”
“And I assume Raphael wasn’t of any particular help,” I said.
“That’s a correct assumption. Anyway, he came and demanded to know whose baby I was trying to put off on him.”
She went quiet again, though I could sense there was more she wanted to say.
“Don’t hold back. I need the truth. No matter how uncomfortable it might be,” I said, urging her on.
She nodded. “I know. It’s just, thinking back on that, I made a mistake. I was given a sign, and I ignored it.”
“What was the sign?”
“He questioned your paternity and my character and honesty,” she said by way of answer. “Instead of packing our things and filing for divorce, I tried to reason with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“He said some…not nice things,” she said.
I snort-laughed. “Let me guess. He said I was too fat to be his baby.”
Her eyes widened, anger and confusion in them. “Why do you think he would say that?”
“I came across a couple of pictures of me when I was a baby. It was several years after Grandfather died, so I was maybe ten. I looked at them and took them to Raphael, wanting to talk about them. I was desperate for anything like a connection back then.”
“Somehow, I know he didn’t give you one.”
