Then, my son finally speaks.
“This is the only photo I have of you,” he says, his voice low but steady. “Mom kept it. Said you didn’t want us.”
“I was wrong,” he mutters. “So damn wrong.”
My son tilts his head. “She raised me alone. Worked two jobs. Missed meals. Sold her guitar—her favorite guitar—just to buy my schoolbooks.”
My father’s shoulders sag. I see his eyes glass over. He looks older than I remember. Smaller, even. Not the towering, unforgiving figure who screamed at me the night I told him I was pregnant. Not the man who slammed the door behind me while I cried on the front porch with a garbage bag full of my life.
“I didn’t know,” he whispers.
“You didn’t want to know,” my son snaps. “You threw her away like trash. She was just a scared kid who needed her dad.”
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