Page 223 of The Storm

She clasps the fingers of one hand tightly with the fingers of the other.

I take the waterglass just so I have something to do with my hands.

“You look good,” Mom says. “You both do.”

Once again, I’m at a loss for words. What do I say to that?

She sighs, unlinks her fingers and spreads them out on the table in front of her. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back home. I’ve practiced what I want to say to you, both of you, so many times over the years. But I don’t know where to start.”

Nick presses his lips together for a moment. “How did you find out?”

Mom’s eyes dart to Nick before she looks back at the table. “Claire was getting a divorce,” she says. “And your… father didn’t want to pay child support. According to Claire, he had this obsessive belief that since you didn’t look anything like him, you weren’t his.”

“Well, he got that part right,” Nick mutters.

“The DNA test results showed you weren’t either of theirs, so Claire eventually contacted the hospital, and they contacted us. It was a tiny rural hospital. We were visiting friends in Pennsylvania. Didn’t exactly expect to go into labor, but there we were. Claire was living in Bois Run already at the time, so that’s where you were supposed to be born.”

“But how did it happen?” Nick asks. “Aren’t there supposed to be rules or something for this?”

“Human error,” Mom says. “The hospital had closed by the time this all emerged. We got lost in bureaucracy, meeting an endless row of people, none of whom were interested in taking responsibility. They just kept telling us to contact another department. Eventually we sued. Mostly to makesomebodygive us those answers. To make sure somebody took responsibility, so something like this wouldn’t happen again.” She looks up between me and Nick. “I’ve tried to piece it together countless of times over the years. I’ve tried to figure out when. They took you away periodically to weigh you because you weren’t gaining weight as quickly as you should have. I was stressed. I felt so overwhelmed because I was suddenly a mother of two. I had a plan about how I was going to give birth and where and how it was all going to go, and none of it went according to the plan, and it just all got to be too much. Like waves crashing over my head. I sat in the hospital, and I cried because it seemed like nothing was going my way.” She exhales. “It was a lot of emotions and hormones and stress, and things didn’t go like I had planned them, and so far in my life everything had. I’m not… It’s not important, really. Not a day has gone by when I didn’t think of you,” she says, eyes on Nick. “I held you in my arms, and I loved you so much, and I welcomed you to the world. But when they took you from me and handed me a whole different tiny human…” She shakes her head and presses her lips together tightly for a moment. “I didn’t even realize.”

“And then… after? Somebody decided Nick and I should both stay where we were?” I say slowly.

She swallows hard and licks her lips. Her eyes meet mine, a pleading look in them. “You were almost three. You called me Mommy. I read you a bedtime story every single night and cuddled with you until you fell asleep. Your favorite thing to dowas to ride the tiny scooter we got you for your birthday. You liked French toast and pancakes and hated scarves because they were itchy. I… I knew everything there was to know about you. You were my son. How was I ever supposed to give you up?” Her voice breaks, but then she gathers herself and looks at Nick.

“But then there was this other little boy… You have Gus’s eyes,” she says softly. “I didn’t know any of those things about you. But I felt you in here the moment I first saw you.” She presses her palm to her chest. “It was an impossible situation.”

Nick looks away.

“How come I never knew Nick existed?” I ask quietly. “Why?”

Once again, she’s looking down at her hands, avoiding my gaze. “We tried. For a little while. We didn’t have a plan to separate you.”

“But you did anyway.” My throat goes thick with suppressed anger.

“I’ve regretted all of it,” she says. “But it wasn’t just my choice.” She leans back, her gaze fixed on some faraway point out the window. “It’s incredibly difficult to be put in that situation.” She glances at Nick. “You were my son, but not really.” She looks at me next. “You were Claire’s, but not really. She was lovely. Claire,” she clarifies. “Truly lovely. I couldn’t have picked a better mother for the child I carried for nine months if I’d tried.”

We’re all silent for a bit. I can tell both Nick and Mom are remembering her.

I feel strangely detached from this moment. She was my mother, but the only memory I have of her is the faint image of her sitting at a table on my parents’ back porch. I don’t remember if she was looking at me differently. I don’t remember if she was looking at me at all. I was too busy staring at the strangely hostile boy across the table from me, trying to figure out how to get his attention.

“Then why?” I ask quietly.

Mom shakes her head helplessly. “Loving a child and raising a child aren’t always the same thing. And every time we looked at you—” She looks at me. “Every time we saw you two… we also saw what we had lost. It hurt,” she says quietly. “We told ourselves it was important that you boys knew each other. We said we’d make it work.”

“What happened?” Nick asks in a tone much more even than I could ever manage.

“Reality happened,” Mom says. “We’d sit there watching you two. Claire would watch me help Go tie his shoes. She’d see him run to me when he got hurt. I would watch Nick climb into her lap and doze off when he was tired.”

Neither of us says anything.

“Can you imagine what that’s like? To look at your child and know somebody else gets all the moments that should have been yours? Knowing she feels the same thing about you? Neither of us handled it particularly well. We smiled and hid those feelings, and afterward we’d both go home and fall apart.”

My anger falters slightly. Mom stares down at her wedding ring, absently twirling it back and forth.

“And,” she says haltingly while sending Nick a careful look, “I think she felt guilty.”

Nick stiffens next to me.