Grandma looked at her quietly.
“I understand,” she said.
“I don’t mean to be rude. But my mother’s dying. She doesn’t need strangers coming in here upsetting her.”
“Catherine,” Dr. Hale said.
“What?”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he looked at Grandma. She nodded, just slightly.
“Your mother isn’t confused,” he said. “She knows exactly what year it is. And she knows exactly what she’s asking for.”
Catherine stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your mother had a baby,” Dr. Hale said. “In this hospital. In Room 214. In April of 1975. Before she met your father. A little boy.”
Catherine’s face went completely white.
“That’s not true,” she said.
“It is true.”
“No. That’s not… Mom would have told me. She tells me everything.”
“Her father made her promise never to tell anyone,” Dr. Hale said. “She kept that promise for fifty-one years.”
