“You expect me to believe that?”
His mother suddenly snapped.
“Because I became ashamed!”
Silence dropped heavily between them.
Ethan stared at her.
Evelyn’s composure cracked.
“I watched you after Hannah vanished. You became colder. You stopped laughing. You never married. You buried yourself in operating rooms while I kept telling myself I had saved your future.”
Her eyes glistened.
“Then the boy’s adoptive parents died.”
She swallowed.
“I saw his photograph.”
Ethan felt something terrible approaching.
“He had your eyes.”
Evelyn whispered, “Yes.”
For the first time in decades, she looked old.
“I knew what I had done.”
“Where is he?”
“A guardianship agency placed him with a foster family in Oak Park.”
Ethan was already turning.
His mother spoke behind him.
“Ethan.”
He stopped.
“There’s something else.”
He looked back.
“The man in those photographs with Hannah—the one I told you was her lover?”
