Emily slowly stepped into the bathroom.
Tears immediately filled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I never wanted you to find out like this.”
I looked back at the birthmark.
“I know that mark.”
She nodded.
“I know.”
The same birthmark had belonged to Emily’s father.
I’d seen it years earlier in family photos displayed at their wedding.
“It runs in their family,” she said quietly.
“My grandmother had it. My father had it. Now my son has it.”
I frowned.
“Then… why hide it?”
Emily looked down.
“When he was born, everyone kept calling him your son’s twin.”
“They said he had your family’s eyes.”
“Your family’s smile.”
“Your family’s nose.”
She forced a sad smile.
“No one ever noticed he looked like me.”
She paused before continuing.
“My father died when I was sixteen.”
“I barely have photographs of him.”
“That birthmark is the one thing my son inherited that reminds me of my dad.”
Her voice broke.
“But every time someone saw it…”
“They’d ask questions.”
“They’d joke that he must belong to someone else because your son doesn’t have it.”
“One person even suggested a DNA test.”
My heart sank.
“So I started covering it.”
“Not because I was ashamed.”
“But because I got tired of defending my family.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
“I wanted bath time to be peaceful.”
“No questions.”
“No comments.”
“No suspicion.”
Just… my little boy.
I gently picked up the waterproof bandage.
Then I set it in the trash.
“You don’t need this anymore.”
Emily looked at me in surprise.
I smiled.
“From now on, if anyone asks about that birthmark…”
“I’ll be the first one to tell them exactly what you just told me.”
“That little mark is part of his family.”
“And nobody has the right to turn it into gossip.”
She burst into tears and hugged me tightly.
That night, I realized she hadn’t been keeping a secret from me.
She’d been protecting her son from a world that was far too quick to judge what it didn’t understand.
