He looked at Ethan then, this scruffy boy with his freshly shorn hair, and David — Lily’s distant, private father — put his face in his hands and wept at a principal’s desk.
“You have no idea what your son has done,” he said again, but softly now, to me, and I finally understood it wasn’t an accusation.
It was the most desperate thank-you a father could make.
Because there was one more thing. Ethan was fourteen. A minor cannot consent to a procedure like this on his own.
It needed me.
Everything my son had secretly set in motion — the swab, the match, Lily’s whole chance — now came down to whether his mother would say yes.
Chapter 4: The Yes
I want to tell you I said yes instantly, that a mother doesn’t hesitate.
But any parent reading this knows the truth, which is that I sat in that office and felt two loves tear straight down the middle of me.
