Inside the box was a photograph of my late husband, Rowan, holding a newborn baby. On the back, in his handwriting, were the words, Margot — six weeks old. My knees nearly gave out. Margot’s mother, Elise, explained that she and Rowan had dated briefly before he met me. She became pregnant after they separated, and although Rowan had quietly helped financially, she had never wanted to interfere with the family he later built with me.
Wren had discovered the truth two weeks earlier during a school genealogy assignment. Margot had brought in an old photograph of her father, and Wren recognized him immediately. The girls compared dates, photographs, and eventually confronted Elise. Margot was Wren’s half-sister. Wren had come home devastated—not because she hated Margot, but because she had been carrying the secret alone and didn’t know how to tell me something that might change the way I remembered her father.
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