He reached into his coat and placed a sealed plastic bag on the chair between us.
Inside was another black notebook.
Older than the first.
Its cover was cracked.
The edges were worn.
And on the front, written in faded ink, was a date from years before we had ever met.
I looked at my husband.
“Why did you bring this to me?”
He stared at our sleeping son.
“Because I finally realized my mother wasn’t trying to protect a treatment plan.”
He looked back at me.
“She was trying to protect a history.”
I didn’t open the notebook immediately.
I was afraid of what another page might contain.
But I also understood something I hadn’t understood that afternoon.
The first notebook had explained what happened to my baby.
The second one might explain why she had chosen him in the first place.
And if my husband’s initials were inside it too, then the story wasn’t simply about what his mother had done.
