PART 3 — THE MOTHERS NAME
I called my sister Diane that night, and the two of us finally told Josh the truth we had kept from him for twenty-one years.
I did give birth to Josh. He is my son, and he always was. But twenty-one years ago I was in no position to raise a child. I was barely holding my own life together, and in the weeks before he was born, my mother and my sister made a plan out of love. Diane, who ached for a baby she could never have, would raise him, and the paperwork was quietly filed with Diane and Ray as his parents, so he would have a steady home no matter what became of me.
Then I woke up in that hospital room and they put my son in my arms, and I could not let him go. And my sister Diane, who wanted him more than anything in this world, looked at my face and stepped back. She gave him to me. She chose to be his aunt so I could be his mother.
The birth certificate that frightened my son was never proof of a lie. It was proof of how many people were ready to love him before he ever took his first breath.
My mothers note, I am sorry, I had to protect her, had meant me. She had built that safety net to protect my chance to keep my boy, and when I kept him, she hid the evidence of the plan so it would never confuse the child we all adored.
Josh sat on his grandmothers carpet and cried, but not the way he had feared. Diane took his hand and told him she had spent twenty-one years being the proudest aunt in the world, and that she would not trade one day of it.
My son was not the product of a secret. He was the product of three women who all wanted him so badly that the only hard part was deciding who got to be the happiest. He has his mother, and he has an aunt who loved him enough to give him back. There are far worse things to find folded in a Bible.