Because he wanted to save lives.
Those things were true.
But they were not the whole truth.
So I told her.
Her father was dying.
He was terrified.
He had a daughter coming whom he would never meet.
And he had just discovered a seventeen-year-old son he had never been
allowed to know.
Suddenly, time meant something different to him.
He could not create more for himself.
So he wanted whatever remained of his body to create more time for
someone else, wherever medicine and the law allowed it.
Then Lily asked:
“Was Dad a good person?”
I looked at the photograph on our shelf.
Mark.
Me.
Baby Lily.
And beside it, another photograph taken years later.
Lily with her older brother Noah.
“Yes,” I said.
“But he wasn’t perfect.”
She considered that.
“Are you?”
I laughed.
“Absolutely not.”
That answer satisfied her.
Mark’s final secret hurt me.
