“I admired her.

I owed her mother more than I knew how to repay.

But I never had a romantic relationship with her.”

“Then why not tell me her name?”

“Because the lie grew.

By the time Paige was old enough to ask about adoption, telling the truth meant admitting I’d made you strangers to a part of our history.”

We began meeting with a counselor, not because I had forgiven him but because I wanted a room where my anger could exist without becoming a verdict we couldn’t take back.

Gregory listened as I described the humiliating hours in which I had imagined he had secretly fathered Paige with the tattooed woman.