“Father,” I said in acknowledgment. It was all I could manage under the circumstances.

“How did you know to come?”

The question threw me. “What do you mean? I got your letter.”

“Letter?” He looked genuinely confused. “I didn’t write you a letter.”

I thought of the dozen missives that had arrived sporadically over the years and the handwriting that had become familiar because of them. I’d always just assumed he’d been the one sending them. If not he, then who?

Father Thomas tilted his head as he regarded me, as though I was a puzzle he’d long before given up on solving. He still wore that air of wounded disappointment that I’d found so difficult to bear in the last weeks of my pregnancy, as though I’d let him down in some unbearable way that he’d never recover from.

He took my elbow and led me toward the viewing window, nodding beyond the glass. I looked from his face to Daniel’s bed. My view was unhindered by curtains this time, and I could make out Daniel’s upper body hidden under a sheet and raised up a few degrees by the incline of the bed. He had bandages wrapped around his head and his face was swollen. I wouldn’t have recognized him as the man from the last photo that I’d been sent. But then, without all those photos over the years, I never would have recognized him at all.

A nun was sitting beside Daniel’s bed. She had her elbows propped up against his mattress with her forehead resting against her interlaced fingers. Her wimple hid most of her face, but I could see she was mouthing what looked like a feverish prayer as tears coursed down her cheeks.

“See that woman? That’s Daniel’s mother. She’s been his mother ever since you left.”

Even if he hadn’t filled me in on their relationship, I would have guessed it. If ever there was a picture of maternal anguish, then she was it.

Father Thomas continued, “Your being here will just upset her. I know you think there’s something here for you, but there isn’t. There’s nothing you can do for Daniel but you can do the right thing for her. The past is in the past. I beg you to put it behind you where it belongs and move on.”

I wanted to tell him that he was wrong. The past wasn’t a place you could just walk away from; it was something you carried with you your entire life, and year upon year as your arms got weaker, the burden just got heavier and harder to bear. But I wanted so much for him to be right because that meant I got to set it down—all that guilt and regret and shame—and leave it there.

This is yours now, I wanted to say. You take it.