“She showed me a picture of her father.”
Still nothing.
The biker’s voice dropped.
“He has my face.”
His sister inhaled sharply.
He heard it.
Small.
Fast.
But unmistakable.
The biker pressed the phone harder against his ear.
“You know.”
His sister finally spoke.
“I know there were papers.”
“What papers?”
“Mom kept them locked away.”
“What papers?”
“I never read all of them.”
He turned away from the diner window.
“What did you read?”
His sister’s voice trembled.
“I was seventeen.”
The biker said nothing.
“I found an envelope behind some insurance documents. It had your birth date on it.”
“And?”
“There were two infant identification numbers.”
The biker felt his knees weaken.
He leaned against his motorcycle.
His sister continued.
“I asked Mom.”
“What did she say?”
“She took the papers away.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me you were born during a family crisis and there were things I was too young to understand.”
The biker stared at the ground.
“Two infant numbers.”
“Yes.”
“You never told me.”
“I didn’t know what they meant.”
“You knew enough to remember.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because later I asked again, and Mom started crying.”
The biker closed his eyes.
His sister’s voice softened.
“She made me promise not to bring it up with you unless she decided to.”
“And she never did.”
“No.”
Their mother had died eleven years earlier.
Their father had been gone much longer.
Whatever explanation they carried had disappeared with them.
The biker rubbed his forehead.
“There’s more.”
His sister hesitated.
He waited.
“I found another document years later.”
“What document?”
“An adoption agency receipt.”
The biker opened his eyes.
His sister quickly added, “It didn’t have a child’s name.”
“Why would Mom have an adoption agency receipt?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You suspected.”
His sister began crying.
The sound took him by surprise.
She was seventy-one years old.
He could count on one hand the number of times he had heard her cry.
“I thought maybe you were adopted.”
The biker said nothing.
“But then I saw Mom’s hospital records. She gave birth that day. So I told myself it must have been for someone else.”
The biker looked through the diner window again.
The little girl had pressed both hands against the glass.
She was watching him.
Their eyes met.
She smiled.
The biker nearly dropped the phone.
“I’ll call you back.”
“Wait.”
He ended the call.
For several seconds, he stood beside the motorcycle without moving.
Then the diner door opened.
The mother stepped outside alone.
She stayed near the entrance.
“Are you okay?”