"I'm not saying it was right," she said. "I'm saying that's what I thought, at twenty-four, scared out of my mind. I thought I'd tell you after the first year. Then he was born, and he had all that dark hair, and I looked at him and I… I think I knew then. Not for certain. But in my body. And the nurse put him on your chest, and you looked at him, and I've never seen a human being look at anything like that. You said, Hi, buddy. Hi, I'm your dad. And I couldn't. I just couldn't."
"So you decided."
"I didn't decide. I kept not deciding. Every year on his birthday I told myself, next year. When he's old enough to understand. When you've got five years sober. When Lily's born. When the house is paid down. When things are calm." She laughed, horribly. "Things were always calm. That was the problem. There was never a bad enough day to ruin with it."
"Did you ever find out for sure? Before today?"
She shook her head. "I bought a paternity kit once. When he was three. One of those drugstore ones. I sat in the bathroom with the swabs for an hour, and then I threw the whole thing in the dumpster behind the CVS so you wouldn't see it in the trash. I didn't want to know. If I didn't know, it might still be you."
"And him. Daniel. He asked you, you said."
"He wrote me a letter. A real letter, paper, when Tyler was about a year old. Someone from high school had told him I'd had a baby in April, and he did the math. It was a short letter. He said, If there's something I should know, I would want to know it. If there isn't, I'll never ask again, and I'm happy for you." She pressed her palms against her eyes. "I wrote back three lines. I said, He's Eric's. Please don't contact me again. I wish you every happiness. And he never did. He kept his word. He's the kind of person who keeps his word."