Mi esposa, que está en fase terminal, me pidió que encontrara mi primer amor como su último deseo; cuando supe por qué, casi me fallaron las rodillas

 

‘Entonces asegúrate de que no lo haga.’

 

I couldn’t tell Anna over the phone.

 

It was after eleven when I stood at her door again, clutching the letters.

 

Anna opened it.

 

“She’s alive,” I said. “I found our daughter.”

 

She froze.

 

“You found her?”

 

“Her name is Rebecca.”

 

“Rebecca?”

 

“My Rebecca. The daughter Carol and I adopted.”

Anna covered her mouth.

 

“Oh my God.”

 

“She has a good life.”

 

“Family?”

 

“Two boys.”

 

Tears filled Anna’s eyes.

 

“I’m a grandmother.”

 

“Yes.”

 

She lowered herself onto the porch step and began to cry.

 

I sat beside her until she finally wiped her face.

 

“Does she know about me?”

 

“No.”

 

“Are you going to tell her?”

 

Rebecca had buried Carol only weeks earlier.

 

Now I had to tell her that the woman she’d known as her mother had hidden the truth about her birth for thirty-eight years.