Mark silently nodded.
“A boy.”
Helen began to cry.
“We named him Tyler,” Mark continued. “I was there when he was born. I held him for a few minutes. And that’s when I saw the mark.”
He looked at Luke.
“The same one.”
“Where is he now?”
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Mark’s face changed.
“He died.”
But at that moment, Helen quietly said:
“No.”
Mark spun toward his mother.
“What did you say?”
Helen gripped the back of the chair with both hands.
“Tyler didn’t die.”
I suddenly couldn’t even feel the pain from the delivery anymore.
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Mark simply stared at his mother.
“Say that again.”
“He didn’t die.”
Mark stood up.
“You told me he died in the hospital.”
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“I know.”
“I’ve believed that for seventeen years.”
Helen began sobbing.
“Your father decided you were too young. Rachel’s parents didn’t want her raising a baby either. They made an arrangement.”
“What kind of arrangement?”
Helen closed her eyes.
“They gave the baby up for adoption.”
The expression that appeared on Mark’s face frightened even me.
“And you told me my son was dead?”
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Helen nodded.“They told Rachel that you had abandoned her and the baby.”
Mark stumbled backward as though someone had struck him.
Suddenly, all of his behavior over the years began to make sense.
Every disappointment.
Every long stare at fathers with their sons.
Every time he had insisted, “This time it’ll be a boy.”
He hadn’t simply wanted a son.