PART 3
Garland stared at him.
“Thank you,” he managed.
The man turned toward me and kissed my cheek.
“Hello, Mama.”
That one word changed the entire room.
Mama.
Garland’s eyes moved back to me.
“Who is that?”
I smiled.
“That’s David.”
David extended his hand.
“David Carter. Nice to meet you, sir.”
Garland shook it, though his fingers seemed to have forgotten what they were supposed to do.
Another man stepped forward.
“Hi, Mama. Sorry we’re a little late. Traffic was terrible.”
“You’re right on time, Michael.”
He hugged me.
Then came Rebecca, my oldest girl, who had driven all the way from Memphis with her husband and their daughter.
Then Samuel, who had flown in from Nashville.
Then Thomas, who had brought his wife and two children.
And finally, little Evelyn, the youngest of the grandchildren, who was holding a drawing she’d made for me.
Eleven people.
Eleven people who had answered my phone calls.
Eleven people who had spent years calling me Mama, Grandma, and sometimes, when they wanted something, the most important woman in the world.
I looked at Garland.
“These are my children.”
Bonnie let out a little laugh.
“Your children?”
“Yes.”
“But you couldn’t have children.”
There it was.
The sentence she’d probably been waiting forty-two years to say.
I looked at her carefully.
“You’re right. I couldn’t give birth to them.”
The room became very quiet.
“But I raised them.”
I could see people beginning to exchange looks.
Garland pulled a chair away from the table.
“Della, I don’t understand.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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