Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda Read Free Book Online

learned at his knee. When she was eight years old, he taught her to wear a stethoscope and listen to her own heartbeat. At ten, she could apply a blood pressure cuff. She never thought about becoming anything other than a physician. Her father was her hero. She hungered for the weekends, when she snuggled up to him in his brown leather wingback chair as he read.
    “How about you, Mom? How are things at the library?” Somer notices the crow’s-feet around her mother’s eyes.
    “Oh, busy as ever. We’re reshelving the reference section to make room for some donated furniture. I’m organizing a series of workshops next fall on biographies of famous women: Eleanor Roosevelt, Katharine Graham.”
    “That’s nice.” Somer smiles, though she has never understood how her mother stays interested in such a mundane job.
    Her mother brings two steaming mugs over to the table, accompanied by thick slices of banana bread. “So, what’s going on, honey? You seem preoccupied.”
    Somer wraps her hands around the mug and takes a sip of her tea. “Well, we…I…can’t have a baby, Mom.”
    “Oh, honey.” Her mother puts a hand on Somer’s arm. “It’ll happen, just give it time. It’s very common to have a miscarriage. Lots of—”
    “No.” Somer shakes her head. “I can’t. We went to a specialist for tests. I’m going through early menopause. My ovaries aren’t producing eggs anymore.” Somer looks in her mother’s eyes for the explanation she has not been able to find anywhere else, and sees them well with tears.
    Her mother clears her throat. “So that’s it. There’s nothing more you can do?”
    Somer shakes her head and looks down at her tea.
    “I’m so sorry, honey.” Her mothers clasps her hand. “How are you doing? How is Kris?”
    “Kris is very…clinical about the whole thing, ever the doctor. He thinks I’m too emotional about it.” She stops short of saying that she can’t talk to him about this anymore, that she worries if she doesn’t find a way to move on, she may lose Krishnan too.
    “It can be hard for men to understand,” her mother says, looking down into her mug. “It was hard for your father.”
    Somer looks up. “Is that why you didn’t have more kids?”
    Her mother takes a sip before answering. “I had one miscarriage before you, and then after you, I never got pregnant again. There weren’t any tests back then, so we just accepted it. We felt so lucky to have you, but I did feel badly about not giving you a brother or sister.” Her mother brushes away a tear.
    Somer feels a rush of guilt for every time she wished for a sibling. “It’s not your fault, Mom,” she says. Not your fault . Not my fault. They sit in comfortable silence for a few moments before Somer looks up at her mother. “Mom, what do you think about adoption?”
    Her mother smiles. “I think it’s a wonderful idea. Are you considering it?”
    “Maybe…there are all these kids over in India who need families, need homes.” She looks down at her hands, twists her wedding band around her finger. “It’s just hard to think that I’ll never give birth, I’ll never create a life.” She chokes on tears rising.
    “Honey,” her mother says, “you’ll be doing something just as important— saving a life.”
    Somer’s face crumples like a tissue and she begins to cry. “I just want to be a mom.”
    “You will be a great one,” her mother says, covering Somer’s hand with her own. “And when you are, I promise you, it will be the most important thing you ever do.”
     
    O N THE FLIGHT HOME , S OMER LOOKS THROUGH THE MATERIALS from the Indian adoption agency, focusing on the earnest faces of the children. It would be a powerful thing to change the course of one of those lives: to create opportunity where none exists, to make someone’s life better. It reminds her of why she became a doctor. A quote from Gandhi graces the inside of the brochure, “You must be the change you want to see in