That sentence stopped me because I realized exactly what I was considering doing. By withholding the truth to protect Rebecca, I would simply become the next person deciding that she could not handle the facts of her own life.
“And now I’d be deciding for Rebecca.”
“Yes.”
The next morning, I drove to Columbus and placed the letters on Rebecca’s kitchen table. She looked at them, then at me, immediately sensing from my expression that whatever I had come to say was not simple.
“Dad, what is this?”
“Something your mother should have told us years ago.”
Her brow furrowed.
“Us?”
I forced myself to say the words without softening them.
“Rebecca, Anna, the woman I loved before Carol, is your biological mother. And I’m your biological father.”
Rebecca stared at me as though I had begun speaking another language. I pushed the letters toward her and told her to read them because I knew anything I said would sound impossible without proof.
