“That baby,” he said, “had a birthmark on her left shoulder. Raised. Oval. The color of coffee.” He looked at mine again. “Exactly like that.”

I want to tell you that I said something smart or asked a good question.

I didn’t. I just sat there on that crinkly paper table making absolutely no sound for what felt like a very long time. My brain kind of went offline. I remember the flickering light above us and the sound of someone down the hall asking for more blankets.

“My aunt told me my mother died,” I finally said. It came out flat. Not angry yet. Just flat.

“Ma’am.” He picked his words slowly. “I drove your mother to Mercy General that night. She was alive when I brought her in. Conscious. Talking. She gave the intake nurse a different name at check-in. And the next morning, she signed herself out.” He stopped. “Without the baby.”

I actually said, “What?” Like I just hadn’t heard him correctly. Like maybe I’d misunderstood some basic word in that sentence. He repeated it. Same words, same tone. She signed herself out. Without the baby.

My hands went cold. Not dramatically, I just noticed my hands were cold. I was pressing them flat against my thighs and they were cold.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to, and I know this sounds strange. My aunt, Carol, she was a good woman. She raised me in a three-bedroom house in a small town in Ohio. She made me do my homework. She came to every single school play even the bad ones and there were a lot of bad ones. She died when I was twenty-six from a stroke, and I cried for weeks. I loved her.

I love her. I’m not going to sit here and say she ruined my life because she didn’t.

But she told me my mother was dead.

She told me that so many times. So many times. When I was seven and asked, when I was twelve and really asked, when I was nineteen and went through a phase of really wanting to know things. “She passed the same night you were born, honey. It was a bad delivery. You didn’t do anything wrong.” She always added that part. You didn’t do anything wrong. I think she thought that was comforting. I think she genuinely thought she was protecting me.

Or maybe she knew the truth and just couldn’t figure out how to say it. I go back and forth on that. I honestly don’t know which one is worse.