My appendix ruptured at 2 a.m., and I called my parents seventeen times before the world began to blur. My mother finally texted back: “Your sister’s baby shower is tomorrow. We can’t leave now.”

Gerald took another paper from the envelope. It was a letter, the handwriting old-fashioned and slanted.

“I loved Eleanor before she became Eleanor Crawford,” he said. “Back then, she was Ellie Hart. We were young, stupid, and poor, but I thought we were happy. We had a little rental house picked out near the lake. I had a job at the mill. She was taking classes at the community college. We were going to get married.”

He paused.

“Then her parents found out she was pregnant.”

The air left my lungs.

For several seconds, I heard nothing except the machine beside me.

Pregnant.

My mother. Gerald.

I could not make the pieces fit.

Gerald’s voice grew rougher.

“Her family hated me. Said I was beneath her. Said I’d ruin her life. I didn’t come from the kind of people they wanted their daughter tied to. I had grease under my nails and no inheritance. Richard Crawford, on the other hand, had a family name, a business degree, and a father who owned half the real estate in town.”

“My father,” I said automatically.

Gerald’s jaw tightened.

“The man who raised you.”

The words landed like stones dropped one by one into deep water.

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t either,” Gerald said. “Not for twenty-six years.”