Chapter 4: The Gallery Photo
The groomsmen room in the church basement smelled like old coffee and floor wax. Someone had left a half-eaten donut on a paper plate by the mirror. I sat on the edge of a folding table with my tux jacket off and my bow tie loosened, and my phone was hot in my hand.
Maya knocked. Two quick taps on the hollow door.
"Ethan? You in there?"
I didn't answer right away. I was staring at the gallery app. The favorited photo sat at the top of the screen. I'd stared at it a hundred times over the years and never really looked at it. It was me at four years old, perched on my adoptive mom's lap in our old living room. She had her arms around me and I had that gap-toothed grin. The favorited star in the corner was yellow because I'd tapped it myself years ago and never unfavorited it.
I spread my thumb and forefinger and enlarged it.
That was when I saw it properly. Behind us, draped over the back of the couch, was the blanket. It was crocheted, cream and pale yellow squares, with a thick border that didn't quite line up at the corner. Diane had described it downstairs in the parking lot. She'd said, "I made you a blanket before you were born. Cream and yellow. I didn't know how to finish the edge right."
I hadn't told her about the blanket. I hadn't even remembered it until that second. But there it was, in my mother's living room, in a photo from twenty-six years after Diane said she made it. My breath caught and I didn't mean it to.
The door opened and Maya slipped in. She'd taken her veil off. Her hair was still in the low updo but a few strands had come loose around her face. She had petals on the hem of her lace dress, little red and white specks she'd missed when she brushed herself off.
She saw me slide my phone face-down on the table. Too late.
"You're hiding it from me," she said.
I didn't try to lie. I picked the phone back up and turned it over. "I wasn't. I just needed a second."
She shut the door behind her and leaned against it. Her eyes went to the table where the two folded pieces of paper sat next to my jacket. The small off-white note Diane had handed me on the steps and the copy paper she'd given me with the phone number outside.
"You went outside to talk to her," she said. It wasn't a question.
"She was still in the parking lot," I said. "She wasn't asking for anything. She just... told me who she was."
Maya crossed the room and stood in front of me. She didn't touch me yet. "And what did you feel when you read that first note? Because upstairs you just looked confused. And then you looked like you'd seen a ghost."
I stared at the phone screen again. The blanket was still there, enlarged, a little pixelated now.
"I felt like I recognized something," I said. The words came out low. I had to pause before the next part. "Not just confusion. It was like... when she said the blanket. I knew that blanket. I didn't remember remembering it, but I knew it."
Maya's mouth tightened. She glanced down at the photo and I turned the phone so she could see. She leaned in, her shoulder brushing mine.
"That's my mom's couch," I said. "That blanket's been in our house my whole life. I thought my mom made it. Or bought it. I never asked."
Maya stared at it for a long time. Her breathing was slow and controlled, but I could see her hands flexing at her sides.
"So it's true," she said quietly.
"I don't know if it's true," I said. "It's just... it's not nothing. It's a real thing she described that she shouldn't have known."
She straightened up and looked at me, and her eyes were wide the way they'd been on the steps, but now it wasn't shock at Diane. It was something else.
"Ethan, I'm supposed to walk into a reception right now," she said. "Everyone is upstairs waiting for us to be announced. The DJ just texted my sister. And you are in a basement staring at a blanket that maybe means the woman on the steps is your birth mother and maybe means your parents lied to you your entire life."
"I know," I said.
"Do you?" Her voice caught. She pressed her palms against her dress. "Because if we go up there and do toasts and pretend everything is fine, and this is hanging over us, what are we doing? Are we starting a marriage on a secret? You just told me you hid how you felt from me for ten minutes. That's the first ten minutes of being married."
That hit harder than anything Diane had said. I stood up. My dress shoes were loud on the concrete floor.
"You're right," I said. "You're right to be scared of that. I don't want that either."
She searched my face. I tried to hold still and let her see me. I didn't look away.
"What do you need?" she asked finally.
"An hour," I said. "Before we go in. Just an hour to not pretend. I need to sit with you and figure out what this blanket means and what I'm going to do next. No guests, no parents. Just us."
Maya looked at the door, then back at the table. The petals, the papers, the phone. She nodded once.
"One hour," she said. "We tell the coordinator we're delaying the entrance for photos. That's it. We don't tell anyone why yet."
I folded the small off-white note and the copy paper together and slid them into the inside pocket of my tux jacket. I slipped the phone into my pants pocket. The weight of all three in my pockets felt strange and solid.
"Okay," I said.
May you like
She finally put her hand in mine. Her fingers were cold. "Come lock the door," she said, "so no one else walks in."
I did.
