My Wife Told Me Our Baby Died In 1991. I Just Found Out She Sold Him For $15,000 Instead. My Son Just Ended His Life Because Of Her Secret. How Do I Live With This?

The Secret Son

I never had a son. The call came at 9:23 in the morning on a Thursday in November. I was in my woodshop behind the house in Saskatoon, sanding down a chair leg for my granddaughter’s dollhouse, when my phone buzzed against the workbench.

“Is this William Peterson speaking?”

“Mr. Peterson, this is Sergeant Lisa Hartley with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

“I need you to come down to Regina General Hospital. There’s been a situation.”

I set down the sandpaper.

“What kind of situation?”

“Sir, we have a deceased individual here, a young man. His identification lists you as his father.”

The workshop suddenly felt smaller.

“I think there’s been a mistake. I have two daughters. I don’t have a son.”

There was a pause. I could hear papers rustling.

“Mr. Peterson, the deceased is listed as Daniel Peterson, born April 3rd, 1991. You’re listed as the biological father on his driver’s license, emergency contact.”

The year Sharon left me. The year everything fell apart.

“I’ll need to see some identification when you arrive, but we really do need someone to come down. He had your phone number in his wallet written on a piece of paper.”

My hands were shaking.

“I’ll be there in three hours.”

I made the drive from Saskatoon to Regina in a daze. Sharon and I had divorced in 1992. The marriage had been brief, toxic, and ended badly.

She disappeared one day while I was at work, took half the money from our account, and I never heard from her again. We’d only been married for 18 months. She’d never mentioned being pregnant, but 1991, April, that would have been right before she left.

The hospital’s basement morgue was colder than I expected. Sergeant Hartley met me at the entrance, a woman in her 40s with kind eyes that had seen too much.

“Mr. Peterson, I appreciate you coming. Before we proceed, I need to ask: Did you know you had a son?”

“No,” my voice sounded hollow.

“My ex-wife and I divorced in 1992. She never told me she was pregnant.”

Hartley nodded slowly.

“The deceased was found in his apartment two days ago, apparent suicide. No note, but we found some documents that we think you should see first.”

She led me to a small office. On the desk was a manila envelope.

“We can’t legally give you these, but we can show them to you. After that, if you can identify the body, we’ll need you to sign some paperwork.”

I opened the envelope with trembling fingers. Inside were photocopies. A birth certificate: Daniel Marcus Peterson, born April 3rd, 1991, in Regina General Hospital.

Mother: Sharon Lynn Peterson. Father: William James Peterson. That was my full name.

There were more papers—adoption records. My eyes scanned the text, but the words didn’t make sense at first. Then they did, and I felt the floor tilt beneath me.

Sharon had put Daniel up for adoption three weeks after he was born. She’d signed my name on the consent forms, forged my signature. The adoptive parents were listed as Gregory and Diane Thornton of Calgary.

“Mr. Peterson?” Hartley’s voice seemed far away.

“Are you all right?”

“She gave away my son. She forged my name and gave away my son.”

“I’m very sorry. Are you ready?”

I wasn’t ready. I would never be ready.

The morgue attendant pulled back the sheet and I saw my own face staring back at me. He was 32 years younger but unmistakable. He had my nose, my jawline, my mother’s gray eyes.

There was a small scar above his left eyebrow that I had in the exact same place from a childhood hockey accident. My son. My knees buckled.

Hartley caught my arm.

“It’s him,” I whispered.

“That’s my son.”

I signed papers I barely read. They gave me another envelope. This one had been found in Daniel’s apartment, addressed to me.

I didn’t open it there. I couldn’t. I drove to a Tim Hortons, sat in the parking lot, and finally opened the letter.

It was dated one week before his death.

Dear William Peterson, I don’t know if I should call you Dad or Mr. Peterson or just William. I’ve practiced writing this letter 47 times. My name is Daniel.

I’m your son. I found out six months ago. I was doing one of those DNA ancestry tests for fun, you know, the kind you spit in a tube.

I wasn’t looking for you. I had good parents; Greg and Diane Thornton raised me well. I had a happy childhood in Calgary, went to university, became a teacher.

I had no complaints about my life. But the DNA test connected me to some cousins on my biological father’s side. They told me about you.

They gave me your name. I hired a private investigator. That’s how I found out about Sharon Peterson, my birth mother.

The investigator found the adoption records, found out she’d forged your signature, found out you never knew I existed. But he found out something else too, Mr. Peterson. My mother didn’t just give me away.

She sold me. The investigator tracked down a lawyer named Bernard Mai who handled my adoption. He’s retired now, living in Vancouver.

When pressed, he admitted that he paid Sharon $15,000 for me. He then charged the Thorntons $45,000 for legal fees and arrangements. It was a black market adoption.