“Can the boys go back to class? We need to talk privately.”
Once they were gone, she turned to me.
“Did Mark seriously never tell you?”
I laughed once, but there was nothing funny about it.
“Tell me what?”
Beth’s face crumpled.
Then she told me the story Mark had given her eight years earlier.
While I was unconscious after giving birth, he had gone to her.
He told her both babies were alive.
One needed extra medical care.
Then he claimed I had made a request before things became dangerous.
According to him, I had asked that Beth raise one of the twins because I was worried Mark would be overwhelmed caring for two babies.
I stared at her.
“No.”
Beth started crying.
“I didn’t believe him at first.”
“No. I never said that.”
“He showed me a letter.”
“What letter?”
“One supposedly from you. Signed by you.”
My knees nearly gave out.
Beth explained that the letter said I trusted her to raise one of the boys.
Mark promised that once I recovered, everything would be explained.
“And you took him?”
Her face twisted.
“I took my nephew because I believed his mother was asking me to save him.”
Then everything became worse.
After I recovered, Mark told Beth I was too emotionally fragile to speak to her.
Later, he claimed I blamed Beth for taking my baby and wanted nothing to do with either of them.
Meanwhile, he told me Beth had abandoned me because she couldn’t handle seeing Cole.
For eight years, we had both believed the other had walked away.
Beth had raised the boy she called Stefan.
Then she moved back to the area for work.
Stefan earned a place at Cole’s school.
Mark apparently tried to convince her to choose somewhere else.
She refused.
She was tired of uprooting Stefan because of a story she no longer fully trusted.
I stared at her.
“I called you for months.”
“I know.”
“What?”
“Mark told me answering would make things worse for you.”
Then Beth reached into her purse.
She pulled out an old folded letter.
My name was at the bottom.
The signature looked like mine.
Almost.
But the wording didn’t sound like me at all.
And one phrase made my blood run cold.
The letter called Beth by a formal childhood nickname.
A nickname only Mark used when he wanted to annoy her.
I looked up.
“This is fake.”
Beth nodded.
“I know that now.”
Then she told me how Stefan had started becoming suspicious himself.
He had found an old hospital photograph.
In it, Mark was sitting in a chair holding two newborn babies wrapped in matching blankets.
Stefan asked him about it.
At first, Mark said one baby belonged to a cousin.
Later he changed the story.
Then he told Stefan that Cole had the same father but a different mother.
Stefan believed him because children believe the versions of truth adults give them.
That was why he kept trying to be near Cole.
He knew there was a connection.
He just didn’t understand what it really was.
That weekend, Beth and I gathered everything we could find.
I brought my medical paperwork.
She brought old messages.
