I stared at her.
“You didn’t tell me either,” I said. “Renata, I’m your best friend. I sat next to you at his graduation. I asked why you were crying, and you said it was because your baby was all grown up.”
“It was true.” Her chin trembled. “Just not all of it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’d have told Wyatt. Or Wyatt would have seen it on your face. You can’t hide anything, Holly. You never could.” She laughed weakly. “Except one thing, I guess. For eighteen years.”
That stung, because it was fair.
“Ezra begged us,” Dale said behind me. “He’s eighteen. It’s his body, his choice who knows. The doctors said we had to respect it.”
“And yet you went behind his back anyway.”
“Yes.” He didn’t argue. “Yes, I did.”
I looked at the boy in the bed. I remembered him at four, wearing Wyatt’s rain boots on the wrong feet. At nine, sobbing in my kitchen after his hamster died, while Wyatt patted his back. At fourteen, the two of them grounded together for sneaking out to see the same terrible movie.
