For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then a woman’s voice quietly whispered, “Ask your mother what happened to the other baby.”
I felt my fingers go cold.
“Who is this?”
“She knows,” the woman replied. “Ask her about the star.”
The call ended.
I put the phone on the table. Mom hadn’t moved. Her eyes were fixed on the blankets.
“What other baby?” I asked.
Her lips trembled. “Please, Sarah. Not today.”
“Someone just called my house and mentioned a baby. You looked at these blankets like you’d seen a ghost. You don’t get to tell me not today.”
Mom reached for her purse, then let it fall beside her chair.
“I was going to tell you,” she said.
“Tell me what?”
She looked at me, and I saw something I had never seen in her face before: shame.
“You weren’t born alone.”
I waited for her to finish. She didn’t.
