It was my first time on a train. I was going to New York to watch my son, Eric Sanchez, give his doctoral interview.
When it ended, the woman sitting beside me stood and clapped.
She looked so moved that I took her for one of Eric's teachers. I raised my hands and signed to her:
"Are you Eric's teacher?"
She couldn't read sign language, so I took out my phone, typed it, and held the screen out to her.
The moment she saw my son's name, her face filled with pride and something softer.
"I'm not Eric's teacher. I'm his mother."
I froze where I sat, the phone hanging awkwardly in the air between us.
She didn't notice anything wrong with me. She just kept talking.
"My family didn't want me to marry Joseph, you know. They said being a stepmother is a thankless job."
"But the boy lost his mother so young. Poor thing."
The joy drained out of my face.
Up on the stage, Eric was giving his thanks.
"I want to thank my mother, Constance Fox, for decades of care, and my father, Joseph Sanchez, for his unwavering support."
Constance Fox. That wasn't my name.
And Joseph Sanchez was the man who had taken every cent of my savings.
The husband who hadn't come home in ten years.
——
The woman's boasting kept coming, right in my ear.
"Of course, no matter how bright a child is, someone has to lift him up."
She smoothed her hair back with a manicured hand.
"To put that boy through school, my husband built a ten-square-foot office into the hundreds of square feet it is now."
"The house in New York, the cars, every bit of it he clawed out for himself."
Then she caught sight of my phone's lock screen, the photo of Eric as a little boy.
She stopped, and her tone turned wary. "You... who are you, exactly?"
I opened my mouth and found, in that moment, that I didn't know how to introduce myself.
After a long silence, I typed:
"I'm a distant cousin of Joseph's. First time in New York."
Her eyes dropped to my scuffed, worn-down shoes, and a flicker of pity crossed her face.
"A cousin, then. Your husband didn't come with you?"
I shook my head and gave a bitter smile.
Constance sighed and patted my hand.
"A husband really ought to be like Joe. Someone you can count on."
I nodded, still smiling that bitter smile, and swallowed the ache in my throat before I typed:
"Did the two of you register the marriage?"
Afraid she'd get suspicious, I added another line: "None of us relatives have ever met you."
Constance looked at me, a little embarrassed. "Of course we registered. My husband even gave me a five-hundred-thousand-dollar engagement gift."
Five hundred thousand?
I lowered my head, and only then did I see it clearly: I really was a fool, through and through.
Back then, the second year after Joseph left for another city, he came back to the countryside once.
He said he'd taken on debts of several million.
He didn't want the collectors coming around to bother me and our son.
That was why he'd asked me for a divorce.
I refused. I cried and said I wanted to share the good and the bad with him.
He coaxed me, promised that once the debts were paid, he'd come back and remarry me.
I agreed. When he left, I even gave him every cent of my savings.
Not a dollar more, not a dollar less. Five hundred thousand.
After that, I waited in the countryside for him to get back on his feet.
I never imagined he'd use my five hundred thousand to marry another woman.
Seeing how bad I looked, Constance sounded a little apologetic.
"We held the reception right there in the city. On Joseph's side, he only invited his mother and Eric."
"Distant relatives like you, we didn't want to trouble anyone."
I stood there, lost, feeling nothing but cold all through my body.
So everyone had known Joseph had a second family.
Up on the stage, my son was still speaking.
"My mother, Constance Fox, is not the woman who gave birth to me, but she has been more than a birth mother to me."
