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With each person who Willow spoke to at the funeral home, Willow wondered if all of these people knew she was adopted. Was I the only one left in the dark? It wasn’t something Willow felt she could ask here and now. She wanted to mourn her mother appropriately, especially given the tremendous love and care Donna had given to Willow through the years. Still, a strange rage bubbled in her stomach. Why was she never told?

Ralph came to the viewing not long after it began, then stayed for the entire funeral and helped carry the coffin out the door. It was raining, and Willow wore her raincoat to the cemetery and watched, wordlessly, as her mother was lowered into the ground. Her mother had purchased this plot, too, before her passing. There was a plot for Ralph directly beside it. Willow thought it was sort of romantic that despite their divorce, Ralph and Donna had decided to spend eternity together.

After the burial, a wake was held at Donna’s place. Willow had hired a catering company to serve sandwiches and tapas, and plenty of wine. Willow clutched a glass of red and sat on the sofa, talking first to Donna’s old neighbor, then Donna’s old colleague, then Donna’s first-grade best friend. They all said the same thing. “Donna always wanted to be a mother. You lit up her world, Willow. And the way you helped her with music, later in life, when she was nearly gone! You brought her such peace.”

Willow had to continually fight not to burst into tears.

By nine that evening, the last of the visitors had gone, leaving Willow and Ralph the final people at Donna’s place. It was bizarre to sit on the sofa with her mother’s ex-husband, in her mother’s home, without her mother there. For at least the past few years, Donna had been asleep upstairs. Now, she was gone. After she changed into a big sweatshirt and loose pants, Willow fetched a fresh bottle of wine from the kitchen and refilled both her and Ralph’s glasses. Ralph looked glum. He raised his glass and said, “To Donna. I never imagined she’d leave me alone so young.”

Willow sipped her wine and studied the man before her, the man who’d loved her mother. This man was not her birth father, she knew, but the tenderness she felt toward him was daughterly. It had to be. What she’d felt for Nathaniel at the mayoral campaign speech had been bizarre, sans any of the coziness and connection she’d hoped for. But since Donna’s death, Willow hadn’t allowed herself much space or time to consider her true parentage.

“I know things are strange for you, now that you know Donna wasn’t, biologically speaking, your mother,” Ralph said, as though he could read Willow’s mind.

“That isn’t the only reason this is strange,” Willow breathed. “Mom was my mother. I mean, she was the only mother I ever knew. She was my universe.” As she said it, her voice hiccuped.

“She was my universe, too,” Ralph said sadly, shaking his head. “Sometimes I regret our divorce so much that it feels like a curse.”

Willow had never heard this from Ralph nor from Donna before. “What happened?”

Ralph raised his chin to meet her gaze. “I guess she never told you. It’s tied up in your story, though you may already have put that together. I don’t know. The fact is, we were always fine with being child-free. Through our twenties and our thirties, we said we didn’t want kids. We didn’t want all that mess and all that sound. We were happy until, suddenly, when Donna turned forty or so, she told me she’d changed her mind. I thought about it for a while, then told her that I was fine with trying. We were old, but the doctors told us there was a chance we could get pregnant without help. So we went for it.”

Ralph closed his eyes. “Maybe that’s my biggest regret. I don’t know. I should have said no. But she was adamant. What happened after that destroyed everything. Every month, Donna told me it hadn’t happened, that we weren’t pregnant yet. She beat herself up. She felt as though her body had failed her, again and again. Oh, that sounds terrible to say, especially given what happened to her. How her body failed her again.”

Willow squeezed her eyes shut until the panic passed.

“Somehow, we were in our mid-forties, and we were fighting nearly every day. That wasn’t like us. We’d never been those kinds of people. I don’t know who suggested divorce first, if it was her or me. Maybe it was me. In any case, I suddenly had an apartment in the city again, and Donna was still here, in this house, dreaming of having a baby. It tore me up inside.

“Obviously, our commitment to friendship didn’t die, at least not completely. I watched Donna struggle emotionally. I watched her fight to adopt a baby of her own. But she wasn’t making enough money back then, especially as a single woman. I guess it was around then that I visited my cousin in Nantucket.”

Willow raised her eyebrows. “Nantucket?” She’d never been there before, but she’d seen photographs, of course, of that beautiful and white-beached island about an hour’s ferry ride from Hyannis Port. Everyone from fishermen to elite actresses and business owners resided there.

“I was on the island anyway, for a solo fishing trip,” he explained. “I happened to remember that my grandmother’s sister had moved to Nantucket years ago, and that I had a cousin there. I went to her gorgeous Victorian and had dinner with her. She was this terrifying, formidable lady. The entire time, I wanted to leave. But at some point, I began to tell her about Donna and about how desperately Donna wanted a baby. She said she had a baby there on the island, one that was up for adoption. She told me that the adoption had to be a secret, and the people involved shouldn’t be advertised.”

Willow’s eyes widened. What kind of caginess was this?

“I called Donna right away and told her about you, about the baby,” Ralph said. “She wanted to come to the island to meet you, but I told her it was easier for me to take you—that night—and bring you to Boston myself. My cousin and I went to a house not far from there, where we picked you up. You were the tiniest baby I’d ever seen. Holding you made me think of carrying something so breakable and precious. I almost backed out of it. I almost said I needed to wait for Donna. But my cousin told me it was essential to get you off the island as soon as possible. I immediately went to the ferry and took the last one of the night back to Hyannis. Once there, you started to cry in a way that terrified me. I had some formula for you, but you wouldn’t calm down. I eventually rented a car and drove you all the way to Lexington myself. Your mother was waiting for me on the front porch, shivering. When she saw you, she took you in her arms.”

Willow leaned back on the sofa and gazed at Ralph, her heart thudding with shock. How had she grown up with these people and they’d never told her this story? Why had they thought it was right to hide all this from her?

“I know we should have told you,” Ralph murmured. “But your mother was adamant that you have as normal a childhood as you could. She was already forty-seven, but she was youthful and hopeful and incredibly alive. She threw herself into creating a nursery for you, making a perfect schedule, and ensuring you were safe, happy, and cared for. I contributed as much time and energy as I could. A few times, we talked about getting back together, and me becoming your official father and all that. But I think we both knew we’d said too many terrible things to each other. We couldn’t really go back.”

Willow stood and walked to the window, gazing out at the porch where, twenty-five years ago, her mother Donna had welcomed baby Willow and Ralph home from Nantucket Island.

She could picture it, sort of, although the images in her mind were shadowy.

“I found out who my real father is,” Willow breathed, turning back to look at Ralph.

Ralph’s reaction was one of sorrow, not shock.

“Do you know who he is?” Willow asked.

Ralph shook his head. “No. I don’t need to know.”

“You’d be surprised,” Willow offered. “I mean, I think it would really be interesting for you.”

“Please, Willow. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.” Ralph’s face echoed with sorrow.

Willow wondered if this was because he liked to think of himself as her “real” father despite everything. Maybe he didn’t want to destroy the carefully drawn illusion in his head.