I laid everything on her kitchen table. The photograph. The letters.
She looked at the photo for a long time without touching it.
“Anyone could find a photograph!” she shrugged.
“My mother kept that coat because he put it on her shoulders the day he left.”
“My brother wasn’t married.”
“No. But he loved her.”
“Anyone could find a photograph!”
She pushed the photo back toward me.
“People have shown up before claiming things about my brother. It never ends well.”
“He didn’t know she was pregnant,” I asserted. “He died before she could tell him.”
“I said leave.”
I stepped outside. The snow was coming down harder now.
I stood on her small porch and thought about going to my car.
“He didn’t know she was pregnant.”
But then I thought about my mother.
About all those winters. About a coat she refused to give up. About all the waiting she’d done without ever being sure anything would come of it.
I stood there in the snow, the coat wrapped around my shoulders, the same way she’d worn it.
Five minutes passed. Then 10.
The cold settled in. But I didn’t move.
Finally, the door opened.
I stood there in the snow.
Jane stood in the doorway, watching me.
“You’re going to freeze,” she said, her eyes misting even as she kept her chin high.
“I know.”
“Then why are you still standing there?”
“Because my mother waited three decades for answers she never got. I can wait a little longer.”
She was quiet for a moment.
Her eyes dropped to the coat. She stepped forward, reached out, and touched the collar.
Her eyes dropped to the coat.
Her fingers found a small repair along the seam. A careful stitch in a slightly different thread.
She closed her eyes before she spoke.
