My mother, a young woman named Elise, had come to work for Grandma Rose as a live-in caregiver when Grandma Rose's health had dipped in her mid-60s after Grandpa passed away.
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Grandma Rose described Mom as bright, gentle, and a little sad around the eyes in a way she'd never thought to question.
Grandma Rose's letter was four pages long.
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Grandma Rose wrote,
"When I found Elise's diary, I understood everything I hadn't seen. There was a photograph tucked inside the cover, Elise and my nephew Billy, laughing together somewhere I didn't recognize. And the entry beneath it broke my heart.
She wrote: 'I know I've done something wrong in loving him. He's someone else's husband. But he doesn't know about the baby, and now he's gone abroad, and I don't know how to carry this alone.'
Elise refused to tell me about the baby's father, and I didn't press."
There was a photograph tucked inside the cover.
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Billy. My uncle Billy. The man I'd grown up calling uncle, the man who'd bought me a card and $20 for every birthday until he moved back to the city when I was 18.
Grandma Rose had pieced it together from the diary: my mother Elise's years of private guilt, her deepening feelings for a man she'd known was married, and the pregnancy she'd never told him about because he'd already left the country to resettle with his family before she'd known for certain.
