I Was Told My Newborn Had Died—Then My Eight-Year-Old Son Asked Why Daddy Had Paid Aunt Rachel to Take the Crying Bundle

“No.”

“Did you sleep?”

“A little.”

I moved a chair beside him and sat without asking another question.

After a while, he leaned against my shoulder.

I thought we were comforting one another in the same sorrow.

We were together, but we were carrying different information.

I did not know that the difference was waiting in his room, behind the coins in a glass jar.